Bonus Chapter Two Kieran #2
She turns toward the side table. I watch her back, my confusion hardening. She’s doing something I can’t see.
She turns back to me. That nervous smile is still on her face. But her eyes—her eyes are different. Brighter. Softer.
My heart is already beating too hard, and I don’t even know why yet. It’s like my body knows before my mind does.
Her hand comes between us. In a fist.
Then she opens her fist. And I stop breathing.
I don’t think I can start again.
The world narrows to the small thing resting in her palm.
Because in her hand is a ring.
A silver ring with a delicate band rests on her palm. At the center, beneath a clear layer of resin, like a secret preserved just for me, lies a deep red rose petal.
“I found the place you went to,” she says.
Just that. Casually spoken.
She doesn’t see what she’s done. She doesn’t see that my hands won’t stop shaking, that I’ve forgotten how to breathe. That I’m sitting here undone, unmade, rebuilt into someone who didn’t exist before she looked at me this way.
She just smiles, small and warm, and I’m completely, terrifyingly, wondrously gone.
Before I know what’s happening, the tears come.
I don’t even feel it start. The tears just fall.
Fast. Uncontrollable. Rolling down my cheeks before I can stop them, before I can even think about stopping them.
I am not a pretty crier. There is nothing picturesque about this.
My face crumples. My throat is too tight to speak.
My chest is too full to breathe. All I can do is sit there and cry in front of the only person who has ever made me feel safe enough to fall apart.
Her free hand comes up. Her fingers brush my cheek. She wipes my tears away, soft and patient, like she has all the time in the world to take care of me.
The touch undoes me even more.
“This isn’t your fault,” I manage to say. My voice falters halfway through. I don’t care. I need her to know. She has come so far. Fought so hard. I don’t want her to think for one second that my crying means she did something wrong.
“I know.” Her palm rests on my cheek. “You’re just a crybaby.”
Her tone is playful, but underneath—something deeper. Something tender and raw and almost shy. Like she feels exactly what I’m feeling. Like she’s just as undone as I am. Like this moment is shaking her too.
A wet laugh escapes me. Broken. Grateful. Full of too many things to name. “Ouch.”
She smiles and removes her hand from my face.
The loss of her warmth hits me immediately. My cheek feels cold. Empty. I almost lean back into her palm before I catch myself.
“I’m not putting it on myself.” She nods toward the ring in her palm.
I blink at her. For a second, I don’t understand. Then I do understand. And my heart slams against my ribs.
She’s not putting it on herself. Because she wants me to.
I wipe my eyes. My sleeve comes away wet. I must look ruined. I don’t care.
“That’s what I’m here for.” My voice comes out tight. Barely holding. Because I’ve been waiting to say these words for years.
That’s what I’m here for.
To put rings on her fingers. To stand beside her. To catch every moment she hands me and hold it like the gift it is. To spend my whole life proving that she chose right.
I take the ring from her hand. My whole hand is trembling. The ring is small. Light. But it feels like holding the sun. I have dreamed of this thousands of times. But the dream was nothing. Nothing compared to this.
I slide it onto her ring finger.
It fits perfectly.
I hold her hand with both of mine. I don’t want to let go. I might never let go again. I keep staring at that place. At the ring. At her finger. My thumb moves. Brushes the ring. Once. Twice. Just to feel it there. To confirm it’s real.
It is.
She’s wearing my ring.
She’s wearing my ring.
I’m going to cry again.
I can feel it building behind my ribs, rising up my throat.
Nora notices. She always notices.
She clears her throat. Pulling me back just enough so I don’t drown. “Give me your ring now.”
I don’t want to let go of her hand. But I do.
Reluctantly. It feels wrong immediately.
Wrong in my bones. My fingers curl back toward her before I can stop them, but there’s nothing there to hold.
I let go of something I wasn’t supposed to let go of.
My fingers linger in the air for a second.
Empty. Reaching. Already lost without her.
My ring comes off slowly. The skin feels strange underneath—paler, softer, as if it has been hiding from the sun for years. The weight vanishes. No familiar press of metal against my finger.
My hand feels empty.
I feel empty.
A vital part of me is missing. I have forgotten how to be myself without that ring.
This is the first time I have ever removed it since the day I put it on.
I never took off my ring. Just like she never took off her bracelet.
It was our unspoken promise to each other—the one we made before we even said it out loud.
She takes my hand, her fingers wrapping around mine. A shaky breath leaves her.
She’s still nervous.
I want to tell her she doesn’t have to be. I want to tell her that I’ve been hers for a long time. I want to tell her that this ring—this moment—is just a formality. She already owns me.
But I can’t speak.
So I just watch.
She slides the ring onto my finger.
It glides into place. Smooth. Perfect.
When I first wore this ring—years ago, alone, hoping—something always felt missing. The ring itself felt incomplete.
Now I know what was missing.
She was missing.
This ring was always supposed to be completed by her. By her hand putting it on me. By her breath shaking as she did it. By her eyes watching my face.
Now it’s complete.
We’re complete.
I stare at the ring on my finger. It’s the same ring. But it looks different now. Brighter. Heavier. Hers.
I lean in and wrap my arms around her. I’m barely in my chair anymore—half out of it, half collapsed into her. I need to hold her. I need to feel her heartbeat against mine. I need her to know—without words, because I don’t have words anymore—that she is everything.
She hugs me back just as tightly. Her arms strong around my shoulders. Her hand strokes my head. Fingers combing through my hair again and again. Each pass firmer than the last.
She’s holding me together. Or falling apart with me. I can’t tell which.
Her heartbeat knocks against my chest. I count each one. Twenty. Forty. A hundred. I lose count somewhere after two hundred. Her breath rises and falls against me. Each exhale warms my skin through my shirt.
Minutes pass. Maybe more. The chair creaks under my shifting weight. My knee starts to ache from the angle. I don’t move. She doesn’t move.
My thumb traces a slow circle on her back. Just once. Just feeling her through the fabric.
She shivers.
Nora shivers.
That small tremor runs through her and into me, and I feel it everywhere. My chest. My hands. The back of my neck. Then she turns her face. Her nose brushes my ear. Warm breath against my skin. I close my eyes without meaning to.
She’s everywhere now. In my arms. On my finger where the ring sits. Pressed against the side of my face, breathing with me, sharing the same small air between us.
When we finally let go, I don’t go far.
I press a kiss on her head. Soft. Lingering. My lips stay there for a moment longer than necessary. I pull back and look at her.
The blush on her cheeks is deep. Pink across her nose. Spreading to her ears.
Nora is blushing.
A warmth ignites inside me. Small at first. Then it spreads—through my ribs, down my arms, to the tips of my fingers. I’m glowing. I’m burning. A fire that makes me feel alive. Finally. Finally alive.
I lean back in my seat and hold my hand out between us, palm open. I don’t have to wait. I don’t have to ask. She rests her hand on mine without hesitation, her fingers locking with mine.
My other hand drifts to the back of hers. My fingers trace circles across her knuckles, her veins, the spaces between her bones.
Her hands are the most beautiful hands I have ever seen.
I know how she got every line, every ridge, every place where her skin holds a memory.
Her knuckles speak of mornings that started before the sun. Her palm tells me she never stopped reaching for something better.
The skin grew tough where she gripped the mop handle hour after hour—calluses along the base of her fingers, worn smooth from years of scrubbing floors before anyone else arrived.
Her palms still carry that faded roughness, from wringing out rags and carrying buckets of water across tile and scraping dried food off tables after closing time.
These hands never stopped.
Now these hands touch my face.
Now these hands—these beautiful, impossible, hers—chose to put a ring on my finger. I lift her hand to my mouth. My lips press to her knuckles. One. Two. Three. Four.
These hands got her here.
And I will never let them feel alone again.
When I was a kid, everyone talked about having a purpose. A reason you were put here. Something you would spend your life chasing.
I never understood.
Other children wanted to build things. Save things. Become things with names and titles. They pointed at the future with clear eyes.
I had nothing.
I never believed I was meant for something grand. I never dreamed of changing the world or building a name that would outlast me.
I just wanted to live forever with the people I loved. Make them happy. Stay beside them until the very end.
That was all.
Then Nora’s hand found mine.
Her fingers slid between my fingers. Her palm pressed against my palm. Her skin touched my skin.
And I understood.
Everything those people talked about. Every speech about destiny. Every story about finding your place in the world.
This was it.
This is my purpose. Right here. Her hand in mine. Getting to sit beside her—that is what I was meant for.
My ring on her finger is my dream.
For years, I thought I was wandering. I thought I had no direction. But I was walking toward her the whole time. Every step. Every breath.
Every night I fell asleep wishing for something I couldn’t name.
Nora.
That was the name.
Nora rests her head on my shoulder. Her hair brushes my neck. Her breathing evens out against my collarbone. She trusts me this much. To hold her. To be the place she puts her head when she’s tired. I turn my head and press another kiss to her hair.
Both of my hands cradle hers between them. My palm rests right over the ring.
She’s going to wear it forever.
Just like me.
Usually by now we’re at her apartment. Cooking. Eating. Moving through our routine. I love her apartment. But I’m in no hurry to get there tonight.
Everything in that apartment is Nora. Every piece of furniture carries her fingerprint.
She chose every single thing herself. The couch with the soft fabric she touched twice before deciding.
The mugs stacked in the cabinet, each one a colour she loved.
The rug she dragged across the floor three times before finding the right spot.
Frames line the walls.
Her mother’s photo. The one she kept hidden for years. She brought it with her when she left that house. Unpacked it last. Stood there holding it for a long time before she put it in the frame. Now it stays where the light touches it every afternoon.
Then the one I didn’t expect. My parents. The three of us together, caught in some ordinary moment I had forgotten existed. She asked Maeve for it. I don’t know when. I don’t know how she got it framed and on the wall without me noticing.
One night, coming down from the terrace, I saw it.
I stood there for a long time. Then the tears came, quiet and without warning, uninvited and unstoppable.
She didn’t say anything. She just found my hand and held it.
Photos from trips with Maeve and Claire. Sunsets. Messy hair, wind-tangled, strands caught across faces, across mouths mid-laugh. Ice cream dripping down someone’s chin. Nora laughing with her whole body.
Photos of us. Sitting right here. Cooking dinner together in her kitchen. Her looking over her shoulder with that soft smile she keeps only for me.
One candid photo Maeve took during a family dinner. We were laughing at something I cannot remember. Our heads tilted toward each other. Her hand on my wrist. My whole body turned in her direction.
And at last, a photo of just her. From the day she moved in. She is standing outside the door, key in hand, smiling at it like it is the most beautiful thing she has ever seen.
She made that apartment a home.
She told me once she never got to choose anything. Her childhood was a list of things decided for her. Every room. Every rule. Every version of herself she was permitted to wear.
Now she chooses.
She chooses Maeve and Claire and everyone gathered around that dinner table.
She chooses me.
Every night after dinner, I used to walk back to my place, and I hated it. Every step away from her felt wrong—my feet dragging, my chest hollow.
My apartment is fine. It has walls and a roof and everything a person needs to survive.
But it doesn’t have her.
I wanted to stay with her. I wanted to fall asleep with her hand in mine and wake up the same way. I wanted my toothbrush next to hers. I wanted to trace every scar on her fingers until I could do it in the dark. I wanted all of it, every ordinary thing, and I wanted it every single night.
Now I don’t have to want.
I will never go back to that hollow apartment. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not ever.
I squeeze her fingers. Just once. Just enough to feel her squeeze back.
My home is here.