Something inside my chest cracked open.
“So I wanted to show you,” he said. “That we could have everything else. That being with you isn’t just hunger.” His voice softened. “It’s home.”
The room blurred. That old wound in my chest throbbed—but it wasn’t pain this time. It was something loosening. Healing. He wasn’t pulling away. He was trying to makeussafe.
I drew in a shaky breath, my fingers loosening as the truth of that settled under my ribs. All this time, I’d been bracing for the impact. For the moment he’d disappear again.
But he was right here.
“If you ever want to show me what’s inside that box,” I said, steady despite the way my chest hurt, “you’re never going to do that again.”
His dark eyes stayed locked on mine. Hopeful.
“You don’t get to plan our lives in your head and make choices for both of us. If we’re doing this, we’re doing it together.”
A small smile curved his lips as he nodded.
“I probably lost my mind too, considering…” My lip trembled, the burn behind my eyes flooding back. “But I love you, Ash,” I said, my voice breaking on his name.
His expression shattered.
“And I want everything with you too. I always have. So don’t fucking hurt me again.”
He didn’t waste a second. His arms wrapped around me, holding me so tight it bordered on painful. “Never again, pet,” he whispered into my hair. “Never.”
I clung to him, burying my face in his chest, breathing him in. “If you try to push me away again,” I said, voice muffled but deadly serious, “I’ll tie you down on the bed and never let you out. You don’t get to leave me again.”
Sebastian leaned back just enough to look at me, a slow smile pulling at his lips. “Thought I was the one who was supposed to lock you up in my room.”
I fisted his shirt and dragged him back against me, heart hammering. “Then show me you mean it, Ash,” I said, breathless, aching. “Show me you’re going to keep your promises… and fuckingtakeme.”
Something unrestrained flared behind his eyes. I barely caught it before his mouth crashed into mine. Relief broke through me in a rush, my hands sliding into his hair as the kiss turned wild—not for possession, but for closeness, for proof, for the simple, overwhelming reality of us. Because this was choosing each other again without hesitation, without distance, the way we always should have.
His hands slid down my sides to my thighs, grip firm, and in one swift movement he lifted me, carrying us to the couch and settling me into his lap with practiced ease.
“What happened to the bedroom?” I grinned down at him, cupping his face.
“Too far.”
The kiss that followed wasn’t slow. If anything, it splintered—teeth, breath, the sharp edge of need scraping against everything we’d been holding back. My hands slid under his shirt, pushing it up, needing skin instead of fabric. Sebastian groaned into my mouth and yanked it off in one impatient motion, tossing it somewhere behind us.
When my own followed, his eyes caught on my chest. He stilled, lips parting, his whole expression softening.
I smiled to myself. “If you’d tried to ravage me at any point this week, you would’ve seen it.”
His dark eyes lifted to mine, brows drawing together in something that looked almost like pain. The necklace he’d given me was back around my neck, where it belonged. Where he belonged.
His fingertip traced the C engraved into the medallion, adoring. “When did you get it?”
“I went to Maya’s after I saw you wearing yours.”
The look on his face—it was beautiful. The only word I could think of to describe it was yearning. I knew it too well. That feeling had lived locked inside me for so long. For him. For us.
Sebastian leaned in to kiss me again, the urgency returning bit by bit as his hands cupped my neck, one thumb brushing over the chain. Clothes followed in clumsy, desperate pieces. Buttons abandoned. Waistbands shoved down. We kept colliding back into each other between it all, separating only when we had to.
I was dizzy with it. With him.
Sebastian rested his forehead against mine, breath uneven, hands firm on my hips. “Darling,” he murmured—a quiet check-in.
