Chapter 6 #2
When he finally joined our bodies together, slow and deep and impossibly tender, I felt the last of my careful walls give way completely, six years of grief and longing dissolving into pure, overwhelming feeling.
He moved over me like the tide, patient and relentless, murmuring my name and half-finished promises against my skin, and I met him with everything I had left to give, years of loneliness burning away under the same stars that had once watched us fall in love the first time.
We found our release together, tangled in each other under that vast dark sky, his forehead pressed to mine, both of us breathing hard, neither willing to break the contact between us for even a second.
"I meant every word," he said quietly, once our breathing had steadied, his fingers tracing idle patterns against my bare shoulder. "I'm not going anywhere, Lena. Not this time. Not ever again."
"I believe you." And for the first time in six years, saying it out loud didn't feel like a risk. It felt like coming home.
We stayed up there a long time after, tangled together in the grass, watching the stars wheel slowly overhead, and I let myself feel, fully and without reservation, the enormous relief of finally putting six years of careful, lonely weight down.
He traced idle shapes against my shoulder, humming something low and tuneless under his breath, and I realized, listening to it, that I'd missed even this — the small, unremarkable habits of him, the ones that never made it into memory the same vivid way the big moments did, but that had been just as much a part of loving him as anything else.
"You still hum when you're happy," I said.
"Didn't realize I was doing it."
"You always did. Used to drive me a little crazy, honestly, because you never hummed anything I recognized. Just this vague, meandering nothing."
"It's a very sophisticated nothing."
"I'm sure it is." I tipped my head to look up at him, finding him watching me with an expression so unguarded it made my chest ache all over again. "I missed it. The humming. Among other things."
"I missed everything about you. The humming's just easier to admit to missing than the rest of it."
"We should head back before the sun comes up," he murmured eventually, though he made no move to actually get up, his arms still wrapped snug around me.
"In a minute."
"In a minute," he agreed, pressing a slow kiss to my temple, and we stayed exactly where we were a while longer, unwilling to let the night end, the same clifftop that had once held all our young, reckless love now holding something steadier, hard-won, and entirely unwilling to let go.
The sky had started going gray at the edges by the time we finally gathered our clothes, laughing quietly at how thoroughly scattered everything had ended up across the grass.
"I can't find my other shoe," I admitted, patting down the dark grass with one hand while trying to keep myself decently covered with the other.
"How does a shoe go missing on a clifftop? There's nowhere for it to go except off the actual cliff."
"Don't say that."
"I'm just saying, statistically—"
"Tomas."
"Found it." He held it up triumphantly from a patch of rosemary a few feet away, grinning like he'd solved something far more significant than a misplaced shoe. "It made a break for freedom. Understandable, honestly, given the night it's had."
"You're ridiculous."
"You love it."
"I'm reconsidering that position given the missing shoe situation.
" But I was smiling as I said it, taking the shoe from him, and he pulled me in for one more slow kiss before releasing me, both of us dressed now but in no hurry to actually leave, the whole cliffside bathed in that particular soft gray light that exists only in the last few minutes before proper sunrise.
We walked back down the bluff path hand in hand as the sky lightened properly toward dawn, and somewhere near the bottom of the trail, he stopped walking entirely, tugging me gently to a halt beside him.
"What?" I asked.
"Nothing. I just wanted a second to look at you.
In actual daylight. Not stars, not shadows.
Just you." He studied my face like he was memorizing it, some of the earlier lightness giving way to something more serious, more raw.
"I spent six years picturing this exact moment, and it's better than anything I imagined. You're better."
"That's a very smooth thing to say to a woman who can't find her own shoes."
"I contain multitudes." He echoed Diesel's phrase with a wry twist, clearly borrowing it deliberately, and I laughed despite the lump forming in my throat.
"I love you," I told him, simply, no hedging left in it at all. "I'm glad you came back."
"Me too." He kissed my forehead, gentle, unhurried. "Every single day, for the rest of however long you'll have me — I'm glad I came back."
We walked the rest of the way down as the sun properly rose over the harbor, boats already stirring in their slips, a few early fishermen calling greetings across the water that neither of us bothered answering, too wrapped up in each other to care much about the rest of the world starting its day around us.
"What time is Nico back?" Hawk asked, as the town came into view below us, roofs catching the first proper light of morning.
"Not until this afternoon. Juliet's taking them to the beach first."
"So we've got a few more hours."
"We do."
"Good." He tugged me closer, pressing one more unhurried kiss to my temple. "Because I'm not remotely ready to share you with the rest of the world yet. Not this morning."
"That's very possessive of you."
"Six years of missed mornings. I'm allowed a little possessive." He grinned, easy and warm, and I let myself lean into him, into the sheer relief of an ordinary morning that no longer felt like it was borrowed on stolen time.
For the first time in six years, the mirage on the horizon didn't feel like something I'd have to keep chasing. It felt, finally, like something I'd actually caught.
We reached the bottom of the trail just as the town properly woke around us, shutters opening, the smell of fresh bread drifting from the bakery, an entirely ordinary morning made extraordinary by the simple fact that we were walking into it together, hand in hand, six years of careful distance finally, permanently closed.
Somewhere behind us, up on the bluff, the grass would still be flattened where we'd lain tangled together through the night, a small, private mark on a place that had already meant everything to both of us long before last night added one more layer to its history.