Chapter 64
The room was a madhouse — cameras flashing, voices buzzing, champagne bottles popping like fireworks. People swirled around me like a storm, everyone clamoring for a piece of the moment, but I was tethered, anchored, grounded by one single thing.
Juniper.
She stood there, apart from the chaos, glowing like a quiet, fierce light that cut through the noise and heat and dizzy whirl of everything.
I caught her eye, and suddenly everything else blurred — the laughter, the congratulations, the pressure, the expectations — all of it dissolved into static white noise.
Her chest rose and fell with shallow breaths, her eyes shimmering with that fragile, breathtaking mix of pride and vulnerability, and my heart nearly broke and soared at once.
I could feel the ache in her, the way she’d carried my pain with me, how she’d unlocked something raw and real inside me I’d buried for years — alone and festering.
And here, surrounded by a storm of flashing bulbs and people yelling my name, the only thing I wanted was to wrap her up, hold her close, tell her she’d saved me just by being herself.
I could still taste the adrenaline from the scene, still feel the echo of the eulogy on my tongue — that line, that confession, hanging between us, unspoken but loud as hell. I’m grateful to have been yours.
A slow smile cracked across my face, a grin that felt like a secret vow. I’d gone off script… Kellogg hated when I improvised lines, but it just felt… right.
I was alive. More alive than I’d been in years.
And it was because of her.
Because of us.
Because maybe — just maybe — this was the beginning of something that wasn’t about fame or movies or what anyone else thought, but about the life we could build together, messy and beautiful and ours.
The crowd pressed in, but I barely noticed. I shoved past it all — past a flurry of hands and shoulders, dodged a cluster of reporters, weaving through the chaos with a single-mindedness that felt like survival.
Every step I took was for her.
By the time I reached her, I was breathless, my shirt clinging with sweat, heart pounding like a drum in my ears. She looked up, startled but glowing, and when I finally caught her gaze, the world shrank to that single moment between us.
I dropped the polite smiles and half-hearted words and just pulled her into me. Her warmth pressed against my chest, grounding me. “I’m here,” I murmured against her hair, voice rough and low.
She squeezed me tight like she was holding on to both me and herself. For a few seconds, the noise of the crowd, the flashing bulbs, the wild celebration didn’t exist.
“Ansel,” she whimpered, her voice catching on my name. I pulled back just enough to cup her face in my hands, brushing a tear off of her cheek with the pad of my thumb. “You were—” Her breath hitched. “—you are incredible.”
I caught her gaze, dark and shining with everything she couldn’t say. Her voice cracked again, fragile and raw, and it hit me harder than any praise from the crowd ever could.
“I — Juniper — I was nothing until you showed up.” My thumb traced the line of her jaw, slow, reverent. She shook her head fiercely. “Yes. You made me feel again — made me remember who I am underneath all that noise.”
The world kept roaring around us, but in that moment, we were suspended — two broken pieces finding something whole in the middle of the chaos.
She swallowed hard, eyes flickering down, and when she looked back up, there was that fierce spark — the one that had hooked me from day one. “I think… you saved me too,” she whispered, voice steady now but soft like a secret meant only for us.
I leaned in, forehead resting against hers, breathing her in. “Do you think Pooh Bear ever took a lover?” I asked, my own words wavering.
She laughed, and the sound was the purest ecstasy around. Her fingers curled into the dress shirt, clinging to me like a raft in the ocean. “You’re an idiot,” she managed, but her eyes crinkled with a smile.