Chapter 39Beck. Mid December, Present #2
"I never wanted to," she breathed. "God, Beck... I didn’t know how to stay without losing pieces of myself too."
He stepped up a step, close enough to see the tears glinting in her eyes.
"You weren’t supposed to save me," he said, his voice low and rough. "You were supposed to live. To become everything you were meant to be. You had dreams that were bigger than me."
A broken laugh slipped from her lips, raw and shimmering with unshed tears.
"I chased those dreams," she said, her voice shaking. "I caught them. I lived them." She stepped closer, her toes now hanging just over the edge of the stair, the crumpled letter trembling in her hands. "And it was amazing. It was everything I thought I wanted."
She paused.
"But every single victory... every spotlight, every standing ovation..." Her voice cracked. "It would have meant so much more with you standing beside me."
His heart stalled, a painful, breathless beat.
"I would give anything," she whispered, voice splintering, "to go back and find that terrified, heartbroken girl. To grab her shoulders. To make her turn around. To tell her–" Her voice broke, fierce and trembling. "Don't let go. Not of you. Not of this."
He shook his head, the faintest, broken smile tugging at his mouth.
"I wouldn’t change a thing," he said.
Her brow furrowed, confused.
"Why?" she whispered.
"Because you were my right person," he said, lifting his hand like he might reach for her but stopping just short. "We were just caught in the wrong time. I needed to break, to heal, to become someone worthy of standing here now."
A tear slipped free down her cheek.
"I made a thousand mistakes," he murmured, reaching out, his fingers barely brushing against hers. "But loving you? Loving you was never one of them."
Her breath hitched. He could see the war waging inside her. The brutal clash between fear and hope, between everything they'd lost and everything that still might be salvaged.
"When I saw you again," she said, her voice shaking, "all I wanted was to touch you. To kiss you. But mostly…" She blinked hard, swallowing against the thickness in her throat. "I just wanted to talk to you. To tell you how much I missed you. How much I still–" Her voice cracked.
"But I couldn’t even say hello," she whispered. "Because I knew the second I did, it would all come flooding back. Every memory. Every regret. Every lie I told myself, that I was over you, that I'd moved on, would fall apart."
His heartbeat roared in his ears, frantic and wild.
"I was so afraid," she said, her voice fracturing, "because the second I saw you… I knew."
She paused, breathing hard, her chest rising and falling in jagged bursts.
"I knew I would fall in love with you all over again."
She leaned closer, so close he could feel the ghost of her breath against his skin. And she whispered, "The thing is... I didn’t fall in love with you again."
The bottom dropped out of his world. He stumbled back a half-step. But she caught his hand and her tear-streaked gaze pinned him in place.
"Because I never stopped," she said, voice splintering under the weight of it. She pressed her trembling palm flat against his chest, right over his hammering heart.
"I tried," she whispered, the words torn straight from her soul. "God, I tried. I built an entire life around pretending. I buried you under every new city, every ballet, every new face that never even came close. I told myself I was fine. I told myself I was free."
A sob tore loose from her chest, broken and raw.
"But you were still there," she choked out. "In the faces of strangers on the street. In every song set in 12/8 time. In the silence between breaths, where I begged not to feel you." Her hand trembled, clutching the envelope. "It was always you."
"Ingrid," he rasped, her name shattering on his tongue. Her eyes locked onto his and they were wild and burning with a love that hadn’t dimmed, hadn’t faded. A love that had simply waited.
"I never stopped," she said again, fiercer this time. She sucked in a ragged breath, her voice breaking wide open. "I don't want to stop."
The admission gutted him. He pressed her hand against his chest, right over the frantic pounding of his heart. His heart, her heart, somehow the same thing.
"I don't want to either," he whispered, voice ragged, torn open.
His breath left him in a sharp, uneven rush. This was everything he had dreamed of in the darkest, loneliest hours. Everything he had prayed for but never believed he deserved.
Slowly, he lifted his hand, tucking a stray piece of hair behind her ear. His fingers grazed the soft curve of her neck, delicate and trembling. She shivered beneath his touch, her lips parting, her breath feathering against his skin.
"Are you saying you want this?" His voice was barely a breath. "You want us?"
She pulled the five-dollar bill from the envelope and pressed it hard against his chest, right over the hammering of his heart. Her palm flattened there, trembling, but sure.
"Yes," she said, the word breaking from her lips. "I want all of it. Every second, every version of you. I love you. I always have. I always will."
Her words struck him like lightning, igniting every dark corner he had hidden in. His pulse roared in his ears. His vision blurred, not from pain this time but from the sheer, staggering joy of being seen, chosen, and loved. And now, for the first time, he finally believed it.
A slow smile broke across his face, the kind of joy that lit him up from the inside out.
When she smiled back, he caught a flash of her dimples, and it hit him like another strike of lightning.
That was the smile he had spent too many nights yearning for, too many dreams trying and failing to recreate.
He didn’t hesitate. His lips crashed against hers, desperate and sure.
The kiss of a man who had been starving for her, for them, for far too long.
She met him with the same ferocity, her fingers tangling in his hair, yanking him closer, until their bodies fused together, breath to breath, pulse to pulse.
He let himself drown in her. In her taste, her heat, the untamed wildfire that had never once burned out between them.
Every kiss lit him from the inside out, electricity surging through his veins, hotter and sharper than any high he’d ever chased. Her touch was oxygen, and he was breathing for the first time in five damn years.
His hands slid down to her waist, gripping tight, drinking in the way she melted against him, the way her curves still molded perfectly to his body like they had been made for each other.
She whimpered against his mouth, and it broke him open. With a low, guttural groan, he hoisted her into his arms. Her legs locked around his hips without hesitation, her skirt riding up shamelessly high. He carried her up the stairs blindly, driven by pure instinct.
His foot clipped the forgotten coffees on the steps, knocking them over in a splatter of liquid and foam, but he didn’t stop. Nothing mattered. Nothing but her.
She laughed breathlessly against his lips when he fumbled for the door, their bodies pressed so tight there was no room to think, only feel.
He shoved it open so hard it slammed against the wall with a deafening crack, but even that didn’t break them apart.
Her apartment door was hanging ajar, left wide in her mad rush to get to him. She had come after him. That thought alone almost undid him.
He kicked her front door closed with a hard, final thud, sealing them inside their own little universe.
Freddie lifted her head lazily, gave them a disdainful look, and then, deciding her humans were beyond saving, promptly went back to sleep.
"Bed," he rasped, voice rough and wild, like he was seconds from snapping.
Ingrid didn’t answer. She just yanked his shirt over his head in one swift motion, baring him to her gaze. Her hands roamed his chest, tracing the dark lines of ink across tense muscles, featherlight touches that had him gritting his teeth.
"Baby," he groaned, half in warning, half in surrender.
"Door on the left," she whispered against his throat, her nails scraping down his sides just hard enough to make him curse.
He stumbled forward, kicking the door open, crashing into the bedroom with her clinging to him, kissing him like she would never let him go again.
He set her down on the bed, hovering above her for a beat, his chest heaving, drinking her in like she was something sacred.
Her hair spilled across the rumpled sheets, a wild, golden halo, and her caramel eyes burned up at him, dark with desire and something deeper. Something that threatened to destroy him from the inside out.
She was a dream. A fucking prayer. How many nights had he spent tormenting himself with thoughts of her?
How many times had he closed his eyes and ached to have her like this, only to wake up with nothing but memory?
But this wasn’t a dream. She was here, beneath him. Real. Flesh and warmth and longing.
"I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so beautiful," he breathed, the words torn from him.
She peeled the soft pink sweater over her head and let it fall from her hands, leaving her completely bare from the waist up. No bra. Just smooth, flushed skin, pert nipples already tightening under his ravenous gaze, curves he ached to worship with his hands, his mouth, his entire body.
She leaned back on her elbows, legs slightly parted, her little wool skirt riding high on her thighs, he could see the barest glimpse of lace under her tights.
"Fuck," he groaned, utterly broken, before he crashed back down to her.
Her hands were still clutching the crumpled five-dollar bill from earlier, the little scrap of the life they were already rebuilding together. He gently pried it from her grip, pressing a kiss to her trembling knuckles, and set it on the nightstand.