Chapter 22
Chapter
Twenty-Two
Alex
Exams end the way they always do—fast, messy, and anticlimactic.
One minute, there’s a rush to memorize everything that matters, and the next, it’s over.
No matter how you leave, you’re wondering how the hell you did.
By the time we get back to the townhouse, bags half-packed, and the semester already behind us, it feels like we’re standing in between something.
Not just with school, but our new relationship.
Now winter break is here. We'll be gone for a month before classes start again in January.
I'm hoping the time away brings us even closer.
We’re heading to Texas next. It’s home, where the heat is intense and my family even more so.
I can’t wait. Things have been quiet since the dean's office.
Maxwell and Lucinda skipped finals, according to Rose, and Chelsea left for Aruba with her parents.
Good. Rose deserves the break from all of it.
More than that, I'm glad she's spending it with me.
I lean against the kitchen counter, watching her move around keeping herself busy.
I know she’s nervous about going, about what my parents will think, and the conversation we still haven’t had with them about Maxwell and the vandalism to her car.
Ezra agreed it’s a conversation best handled in person.
He’s worried for her, too, and he’ll try to be another voice in her corner.
“You packed?” I ask.
“Mostly,” she says, not looking at me right away. “I feel like I’m forgetting something.”
“You are.”
She pauses what she’s doing, glancing at me. “What?” She blinks, looking around.
I push off the counter, stepping closer, just enough that the space between us lessens. “Relaxing.”
She exhales a soft laugh, shaking her head. And it’s music to my ears.
“I don’t think that’s something I can throw in a bag.”
“Yeah,” I say, watching her a second longer before I make it awkward. “I noticed.”
That gets a look out of her, one that reminds me of the fierce woman I first met at my house months ago.
The one I've been waiting to see break through all this time.
Seeing her things stacked around the townhouse still catches me off guard.
Last week, after clearing out her apartment, she officially moved in.
Some of her boxes are still tucked away in storage, but she's here now.
That's all that matters. I know she wants to ask, but I let the silence stretch between us, filled with everything we didn't say last night and everything that changed without either of us putting a name to it.
“You told them?” she asks after a second.
“My parents?” I nod. “Yeah,” I wait a second before I let out the other news. “My cousins, too,” I confess, and her eyes widen.
“Ezra?” she asks, and I nod my head back and forth.
“Yeah, and the rest,” I admit.
She blows out a breath. “Okay, wow,” she breathes out. “Is everyone okay with me just showing up for almost a month?” Her eyes widen when she says it, like she hadn’t realized it would be that long.
“They’re more than okay with it, Rose. My mom’s already planning things, and a room for you, although I wish you could stay in mine,” I point out as her cheeks turn a pretty pink hue. I continue. “My cousins won’t stop texting.”
She blows out a breath, the curl of her lip lifting the wisps of hair framing her face. The insecurity that lies beneath the surface makes her feel like a burden, but she’s anything but that.
“You didn’t tell them everything, right?” she asks, rubbing her hands together in front of her.
I shake my head. “No.” Not yet, at least. Something in her shoulders eases just a little. “I am going to tell them, though,” I add a second later. “When we get there. And you are, too. Together.”
She nods, but doesn’t say anything. She worries at her bottom lip, dragging it between her teeth.
I don't know which thought she's stuck on, but I know the look.
Maxwell. The notes. Her car. One of them—or maybe all of them—is weighing on her.
She should be thinking about the things every other student worries about after finals, not whether the people she trusted are the ones trying to destroy her.
“You don’t have to have all the answers right now,” I say, quieter.
Her eyes lift to mine. “I know,” she says with an air of exhaustion, it doesn’t sound like she believes it. Silence stretches between us. I take another step closer without thinking, drawn in by something that doesn’t feel optional anymore.
“You okay?” I ask. It should be simple. But the way she looks at me says it isn’t—like she’s deciding between honesty and what I want to hear.
“Yeah,” she says finally. “I just don’t want to mess this up.” Because it’s not just this she’s talking about. It’s my parents, too, and what they’ve become to her. It’s another place to belong, and another place she could lose.
I look at her, confused by the statement. “This?” The word hangs there. One word with so much meaning behind it. I don’t look away, my gaze focused on her. When she doesn’t respond, I give her this. “You won’t,” I tell her adamantly.
She looks away. “You don’t know that, Alex.”
“Hey.” I bring her eyes back to me. “I do.” She shakes her head slightly, but doesn’t argue.
I reach for her without thinking, my hand resting at her waist, pulling her just a little bit closer.
She doesn’t pull away. “You’re coming with me,” I say again, convincing, pleading.
“That’s not something I’m second-guessing.
” Her breath catches slightly, and I feel it, the way she leans into me without meaning to.
“I’m not either,” she admits.
The space between us disappears entirely, natural in a way that makes everything else that led up to this worth it. And for once, neither of us pulls back.
My hand settles against her jaw, my thumb tracing the slightest arc along her skin, not to guide her, but to reassure myself she's really here.
That she's still choosing this, choosing us, even if this feels like less of a choice and more like a vow carved into our bones.
As her breath mingles with mine, our souls exhale in recognition of what was always theirs.
It's everything we are and everything we're becoming.
“You feel it, too,” I murmur, the words slipping out before I can stop them. It isn’t a question, but an acknowledgment that she feels everything, just as strongly as I do.
Her eyes find mine, and in them I see it. It’s that same pull, the same unspoken recognition, the same surrender to something neither of us can name.
“I don’t know what it is,” she admits, her voice softer now, more vulnerable. It’s threaded with something fragile, yet undeniable.
“Maybe I do,” I say, though I don’t explain it, because there are no words that could do it justice, no words to hold weight to something as pure as this.
Instead, I close the distance again, not with urgency, but with certainty. My mouth finds hers in a kiss that feels different from the ones before it. It’s deeper, intentional, as though this moment is no longer about discovery, but acknowledgment.
She meets me there without hesitation, as our mouths move together with an ease that feels instinctive, as though we've done this a thousand times before. She anchors herself to me, accepting this for what it is, even if she doesn’t fully understand it yet.
The pull. And something within us gives way, an irreversible alignment unfolding between us, like two separate paths finally converging after unknowingly moving toward the same destination all along.
The rest of the world around us falls away, until it's just us, suspended inside this moment, everything reshaping itself around the gravity of what’s happening between us.
My hand slides along her back, pulling her closer as I lift her easily against me.
She goes willingly, her legs wrapping around my waist like she was always meant to fit there.
I keep kissing her because I can’t seem to stop, because ending this feels impossible now that I’ve finally touched her like this.
I kick the door open behind us. It slams against the wall with a sharp crack as I carry her toward the bed, my legs hitting the edge of the mattress.
When I pull back, it’s only enough to look at her.
Her pupils are blown wide. Her lips are pink and swollen beneath my mouth, marked by every kiss I couldn’t hold back.
And I see it there. The same thing unraveling inside me reflected back in her eyes.
“You're mine,” I whisper, the words leaving me with a certainty that feels older than either of us, as though they've waited lifetimes to be spoken aloud.
Understanding flashes across her face, stealing the breath from her lungs.
There’s no protest, and no fear, only a deep acceptance of the truth she already feels.
When she initiates the next move, leaning into me and closing the space between us again, I know.
This is not the beginning. It’s the moment everything becomes irreversible.
The moment whatever exists between us stops being something we can deny or walk away from and becomes something powerful enough to either save us or destroy us entirely.