Love #3
“I want you when you’re overwhelmed, when you don’t know how to explain what’s happening inside your own head.” His thumb brushed slowly over her skin again. “When you need space, I’ll give it to you. When you need grounding, I’ll be there.”
His jaw tightened slightly. “But I’m not leaving just because loving you takes work. Nothing worth having doesn’t.”
Riley’s vision blurred completely now, tears slipping free before she could stop them. Declan looked at her like she was something unbearably precious.
“I don’t need a version of you that’s easier to love,” he said softly. “I just need you.”
The last of his restraint broke with it. His breath caught unevenly, and a tear slipped free down his face before he could stop it. The sight of it undid her completely.
Riley moved before she could think herself out of it, leaning forward instantly where he knelt in front of her. Her hand found his jaw first, trembling slightly against his skin, and then she kissed him.
It was soft at first. Careful only for the space of a heartbeat before emotion overtook caution entirely. Declan made a quiet, broken sound against her mouth, one hand rising instinctively to hold the side of her face like he needed to feel that she was real.
Riley kissed him again, deeper this time, every feeling she hadn’t known how to say pouring into it instead. Relief. Want. Love. The unbearable ache of almost losing him.
Declan kissed her back like he’d been holding himself still for too long.
The angle became awkward almost immediately with him still on his knees between hers, but neither of them seemed capable of pulling away long enough to care.
Riley half-laughed through a shaky breath against his mouth as her balance shifted forward, and the next second she was moving with him, following him down onto the floor without resistance.
Declan caught her automatically, one arm wrapping tightly around her waist to stop her hitting the ground too hard as they landed together beside the chair. Riley ended up half on top of him, tangled against his chest, and for the first time in weeks neither of them tried to create distance.
She buried herself into him.
Her arms wrapped tightly around his shoulders, holding onto him with a desperation she no longer had the energy to hide. Declan held her just as fiercely, his face pressed briefly into the side of her neck as his breathing shook unevenly against her skin.
Neither of them spoke. They just stayed there on the floor together, holding onto each other like they’d both finally found something they thought was gone for good.
Then Riley broke. The sobs came quietly at first, slipping free without resistance as her face pressed harder into his shoulder. Her breathing faltered with them, uneven not from panic this time, but from the sheer force of everything hitting her all at once.
Relief so intense it almost hurt.
Grief for the weeks she had spent convincing herself she needed to leave, for how close she had come to losing this because fear had felt safer than wanting something badly enough to break her.
Her arms tightened around him instinctively, like if she held on hard enough she could keep the feeling from disappearing.
Declan didn’t try to stop her crying. He didn’t interrupt it with reassurance or questions or promises. He just held her closer, one hand moving slowly up and down her back in a steady rhythm that grounded her without trying to quiet what she was feeling.
And Riley let herself fall into it completely. Into him.
Her body softened against his in a way that once would have terrified her. Closeness had always felt like something temporary before, something she needed to manage carefully before it became too much. But this didn’t feel like drowning. It felt like being rescued, her life raft in a storm.
“Hold me tighter?” she whispered.
Declan’s arms closed around her immediately, firmer this time, one hand spreading across the middle of her back while the other slid gently into her hair, holding her against him like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Exactly where she needed him.
Riley exhaled shakily as the pressure settled around her, her body giving way piece by piece beneath the warmth of him. The tension she’d been carrying for years seemed to loosen slowly inside his arms, her breathing evening out against his chest.
His lips brushed softly against her hair. Riley closed her eyes and felt all of it: the steady weight of him around her, the certainty in the way he held her, the complete absence of hesitation.
Nothing about it felt conditional.
And for once, her brain didn’t try to pull the feeling apart. She didn’t analyse it or reduce it into something safer, smaller, easier to survive losing.
She just let herself have it. The relief, the terrifying realisation of how badly she wanted this. How badly she wanted him.
She was here, in his arms, with the rest of the world finally quiet around them. And somewhere beneath the fear and the instinct she’d always had to retreat before things mattered too much, something settled fully into place.
She had chosen herself. And she had chosen him, too.