Page 183 of Arctic Titans of Northwood U: Volume 3

And everything else. Every look. Every laugh. Every night you let me close. I kept all of it. I kept you, even when I told myself I shouldn’t.

My throat tightened so fast it scared me.

“I don’t understand,” I whispered.

“I started writing them after our trip,” Damon said. His voice shook in a way he was trying to hide. “At first, it was just so I wouldn’t forget. Then it turned into something else.”

“What else?”

He exhaled slowly. “A way to remind myself that this wasn’t nothing. That I wasn’t imagining it. That you weren’t imagining it. That we were doing something real, even if we wouldn’t say the word.”

I stared at the paper. My vision blurred. I blinked hard.

“You kept this?” I asked.

“Every day,” he said. “I kept thinking if I lost you again, I’d want to know I didn’t invent you. I didn’t just imagine us.”

My chest hurt. The cold air didn’t feel cold anymore. Everything in me felt raw and hot, like I had been stripped open.

“I’m not good at saying things,” Damon said, stepping even closer. His hands stayed at his sides. He was giving me every choice. “I am good at showing up. I am very good at touching you. I am good at trying to make you laugh when you look like you’re carrying the whole world. But I’ve never been good at telling someone what they are to me.”

I could not speak.

“I loved you when we were kids,” he said softly. “I didn’t know it was love. I thought it was a crush that never went away. I thought it was a bad obsession that would burn out if I kept busy enough. It didn’t burn out. It just grew.”

My body went still. My heart stuttered.

“I loved you the summer we kissed,” he continued. “I loved you the next summer when you were eighteen and brave enough to touch me first. I loved you when you left for Chicago, and I told myself I would be fine. I loved you when I tried to replace you with noise and bodies, and it never worked. I loved you when you walked into that basement and looked at me like I was a miserable joke you couldn’t stop wanting anyway.”

His voice caught. He swallowed, eyes on mine.

“I love you now,” he said.

The words were quiet, just Damon standing in front of me with the wind cutting at my face, saying it like he had finally stopped being afraid of the sound of it. So why was I afraid?

“I love you, Seth,” he said again, slower this time. “I love you in every stupid way I’ve ever tried to hide. I don’t want to be your secret fling. I don’t want to be a disaster you survive. I want to be the person you come home to. If you’ll let me.”

Something in me cracked so cleanly I almost laughed.

All the pressure in my chest, the old fear, the waiting, it all loosened at once. It didn’t vanish. It just stopped owning me.

I stared at him, breath coming in short pulls, chest rising and falling, tears burning my cheeks as they spilled. “You are such an ass for making me cry.”

His mouth twitched into an honest smile. “I know.”

I shook my head, and it felt like shaking off years. “We misunderstood each other so many times that we somehow stumbled into love.”

His eyes went bright, and I hated that it made mine go bright, too.

“We didn’t stumble into it,” he said. “I ran into it at full speed. And I kept pretending I was fine either way.”

I laughed, and it broke out of me before I could stop it. It was the kind of laugh that felt like crying in disguise. I pressed a hand to my face, then dropped it again because I was done hiding everything about myself.

“I love you, too,” I said.

Damon froze like he wasn’t sure he heard right.

“I love you,” I repeated, louder now, because he deserved to hear it without guessing. “I’ve loved you for so long it feels embarrassing. I just never let myself believe you could love me back.”