My mom. The only real mother he ever had. And she’s gone and he came here and he is crying and I feel something so big and so tender I don’t have a word for it.
We look at each other.
Both completely undone.
I suddenly notice how genuinely incredible Cassian looks.
Broader. Jaw sharper. Slightly older.
And then I laugh.
I don’t know why. The pills probably. Or the absurdity of everything. Or the way he looks — this person I’ve loved my entire life, red-eyed and real and right here — and I laugh once, short and involuntary, and he blinks.
One eyebrow up.
“Sorry,” I manage. “I’m—” I wave vaguely at the room. At myself. “The pills.”
As if that explains anything.
I forgot he stopped existing here after the hospital and the pills.
He stares at me.
And then he kisses me.
I don’t see it coming.
I don’t have time to decide what to do with it.
I just sit there for two full seconds while Cassian Vale kisses me on the worst night of my life and then every single rational thought I have ever had leaves my body and I kiss him back.
With everything.
Every broken piece of me.
Two years of grey and empty and pill bottles and waiting and the window I kept open like an idiot.
Two years of almost.
All of it.
• • •
He makes a sound against my mouth. Surprised. Like he wasn’t prepared for all of that.
Good.
I feel relieved he's here.
I feel angry it took him this long.
I feel devastated from today.
But underneath all of it—happy.
Which is the most depressing thing I've ever felt.
That happy is still in there.
