CHAPTER 13 Axel #2
I actually froze, like my entire body had forgotten how to function. Because Delia Santoro was looking at me with those hazel eyes and moving closer and this was happening. This was actually happening.
My brain was screaming that this couldn’t be real. That I’d fallen asleep at my desk and this was some cruel dream my subconscious had invented to torture me. That any second I’d wake up and she’d still be considering Jake and I’d still be alone in my office at midnight.
But then her hands were in my hair and her lips were on mine and the world just stopped.
Everything stopped.
Seventeen years of wanting crashed into this single moment and I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, could barely remember my own name. My hands found her waist like they’d been designed for that exact purpose. Like every other thing I’d ever done with my hands had just been practice for this.
She tasted like tears and chapstick and something sweet I couldn’t name. Her fingers tightened in my hair, and I made a sound I didn’t recognize—something desperate and broken from somewhere deep in my chest.
This was Delia. Delia who’d refused to let me hide when I was twelve. Delia who I’d watched from across rooms for years. Delia who’d been Jake’s and then no one’s and now, impossibly, was kissing me like she meant it.
My heart was doing something violent and erratic. Beating too fast, too hard, like it might actually break through my ribs. Every nerve ending I had was firing at once. My hands were shaking where they gripped her waist and I was terrified to hold her tighter and terrified to let go.
Because what if this was it? What if this was the only time? What if she pulled away and said she’d made a mistake?
But she didn’t pull away.
She pressed closer instead. Made this small sound against my mouth that destroyed every careful control I’d ever built. Her hands slid from my hair to my neck, thumbs brushing my jaw, and I was drowning. Actually drowning in the reality of Delia Santoro choosing me.
When we finally broke apart, we were both breathing hard. My forehead dropped against hers and I couldn’t open my eyes. Couldn’t look at her yet because if I looked and saw regret I’d actually die right here in this parking lot.
“Axel.” Her voice was soft. Shaky.
“Give me a second.” My voice came out rough—wrecked. “I need a second to believe this is real.”
“It’s real.”
“You’re sure? Because I’ve been wrong about a lot of things but if I’m wrong about this—”
She kissed me again. Softer this time but somehow more devastating because now I knew what it felt like and knowing made it worse. Made it better. Made it everything.
“Does that feel real?” she asked against my mouth.
I opened my eyes finally. Found her watching me with those hazel eyes that had destroyed me when I was fourteen and were destroying me again now for entirely different reasons.
“Yes,” I managed. “That felt real.”
“Good.” She was smiling. Actually smiling like this made her happy. Like choosing me made her happy. “Because I’m choosing you. Just so we’re clear.”
“We’re clear.”
“And I need to talk to Jake. Tomorrow. I need to end things properly.”
“I know.”
“I’m choosing you,” she repeated. Like she needed to say it again. Like she needed me to understand. “But I need to do this right. Need to close that door myself.”
“I understand.”
“You’re not upset?”
“That you want to handle things properly with your ex-fiancé? No, Delia, I’m not upset.
” I brushed hair out of her face because I could now.
Because she’d kissed me. Because seventeen years of careful distance had just evaporated in a parking lot.
“I’m just trying to process that this is actually happening. ”
“How long?” she asked suddenly.
“How long what?”
“How long have you felt this way?”
I thought about lying. About deflecting. Then decided I was done with that.
“A long time,” I said simply. “Long enough that I built my life around it.”
Her eyes got bright again. “That’s the most romantic and most depressing thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
“Sorry?”
“Don’t apologize.” She kissed me again. Quick. Sweet. Like she couldn’t help herself. “I’m done making you wait.”
“Good.” I pulled her closer because my brain was finally catching up with reality and reality was that Delia Santoro had just kissed me and said she was choosing me and I was allowed to hold her now. “Because I’m terrible at waiting.”
She laughed against my chest. “Liar. You’re excellent at waiting.”
“Not anymore.”
We stood there in the parking lot while the sun set and I tried to memorize everything about this moment. The way she fit against me. The sound of her breathing. The impossible reality that she’d chosen me.
“We should go,” she said finally. “People are staring.”
I looked around. An elderly couple was indeed watching us from near the entrance, smiling in that indulgent way people smiled at young couples.
“Let them stare,” I said.
“Axel Irving, are you enjoying public displays of affection?”
“I’m enjoying you.”
Her face went pink. “That’s cheesy.”
“You kissed me first.”
“I had a moment of courage.”
“Have another one.”
She did. Kissed me again right there with witnesses and fading sunlight and seventeen years of waiting finally, impossibly over.
When we broke apart this time, I was definitely smiling. Actually smiling in a way that felt foreign and perfect and terrifying.
“There it is,” Delia said softly. “Mark’s going to be so smug.”
“Mark talks too much.”
“Mark is wise beyond his years.”
I opened her car door. “Get in before I decide we’re never leaving this parking lot.”
“Bold words from someone who just got kissed for the first time.”
“First time today,” I corrected. “I’m hoping for several more.”
“Greedy.”
“After being deprived for so long. I’m entitled to be greedy.”
She laughed as she slid into the passenger seat and I closed the door carefully. Walked around to the driver’s side while my brain tried to catch up with the fact that this was real. That Delia had kissed me. That she was choosing me.
That seventeen years of wanting had finally led somewhere other than disappointment.
I drove us toward Manhattan with her hand in mine, her thumb tracing patterns on my palm, and for the first time in three days the world had color again.
For the first time in seventeen years, the future looked like something other than careful distance and controlled longing.
It looked like a possibility.
And that was more terrifying than anything I’d faced before.