He leaned closer.
Slowly.
Giving me every chance to stop him.
I didn’t.
Our first kiss had tasted like grief.
The second like goodbye.
The hospital kiss like guilt and desperation and all the wrong doors opening at once.
This one was different.
Dylan’s mouth touched mine softly, warm and careful, and for a second neither of us moved. We just breathed there, lips barely joined, as if both of us needed proof that a kiss could exist without a grave beneath it, without blood around it, without another woman’s ring shining in the corner of the room.
Then I kissed him back.
Not because I was falling apart.
Because I was choosing.
His hand slid to my jaw, thumb brushing beneath my cheekbone. Mine curled gently in the front of his jacket, careful of his side, careful of the body that had fought its way back to me. The kiss deepened slowly, not hungry at first, but aching. Full of all the years we had missed and all the years we were no longer willing to lose.
The Ferris wheel moved again.
We broke apart with a small jolt.
Dylan winced.
I immediately pulled back. “Pain?”
“Worth it.”
“Dylan.”
“Four.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“Five,” he admitted.
“Idiot.”
“Your idiot?”
The words came out before he could stop them.
He went still.
So did I.
Below us, the carnival lights spun and shimmered.
I looked at this man who had hurt me, loved me, run from me, come back bleeding, and finally learned how to stand in front of me without pretending the choice was anyone else’s to make.
“My idiot,” I said softly. “For now.”
