“Yeah.” I exhaled. “I know. That’s on me.”
Neither of us said anything for a moment.
“My only job is keeping everyone in this house alive,” I said, the words feeling inadequate. “That requires absolute concentration. No compromises.” I met her eyes. “I felt mine shift. So I pulled back. That’s all it was.”
Her jaw tightened slightly. “So I’m a distraction.”
“No.” Immediate. Certain.
She blinked.
“That’s not what I said.”
“Then what are you saying?” Her voice had gone quiet. She held my eyes.
She deserved more than carefully constructed distance.
And I didn’t have words for more than that. I had never needed them.
But she knelt there in front of me—hurt evident in her eyes—and every justification I’d constructed on those stairs disappeared.
I moved before I could talk myself out of it.
My hands slid under her arms, and I lifted her off her knees—she gasped, her hands flying to my shoulders, fingers closing in the fabric of my shirt. I then scooped her up completely. Her legs wrapped around me instinctively, and something deep and certain surged through my chest at the way she held on, not tentative or questioning.
I carried her the three steps to the bed and laid her down, my weight following hers onto the mattress, one hand braced beside her head and the other cradling the back of her neck. And then my mouth found hers.
Nothing like this morning. This had been building.
Not careful, not questioning. Just certain.
Not like the rooftop. Nothing held back, nothing measured. My hand tightened at the back of her neck, and I felt her exhale against my mouth—the long, shuddering kind that meant she’d been expecting something else entirely. Her fingers loosened on my shirt. Slowly. Like a question being answered, one word at a time.
It said I knew exactly what I’d walked away from.
And my hands were already pulling her closer.
Her fingers dug into my shoulders and pulled me closer. The sound she made against my mouth was small and desperate, and I kissed her harder for it—deeper, my fingers threading into the hair at her nape. Two days collapsed into the space between one breath and the next. All of it: the roof, the cold distance I’d constructed, every careful calculation I’d made and unmade and made again. Gone.
I pulled back just enough to see her face—eyes glassy with arousal and searching mine, cheeks flushed, lips swollen. She was transformed into something warm and openly trusting, and I fought the emotions welling up in my throat.
“I’m sorry.” My voice came out rough. “I never meant to make you think you’re nothing. You’re—” I stopped, swallowed, and tried again. “Christ, Libby. You’re everything I can’t afford to want right now.”
Her hand came up, trembling, and cupped my jaw. Her thumb moved once across my cheekbone, then stopped, as if she were deciding something.
“Then stop trying to,” she whispered. “Just be here. With me. Right now.”
I brushed my thumb across her lower lip and watched her eyes darken.
“I’m definitely here,” I said.
And I kissed her again.
Slower this time. Her lower lip was fuller than the upper—I hadn’t let myself notice that before. My thumb traced the line of her jaw, and she turned into it slightly. When my hand moved down the side of her neck, she drew in a breath and held it. Her back lifted off the mattress when my fingers reached her ribs. Small things. I filed them away in the part of me that had nothing to do with survival.
She opened it, simply by being who she was.
Her hands slid from my shoulders into my hair, and the slow drag of her fingers against my scalp sent a chill down my spine that made my arms shake. I pressed my forehead to hers, breathing hard, neither of us moving. The world outside continued its quiet, hostile rotation, and neither of us acknowledged it.
