My laugh is breathless and shaky. “She arranged this. Said it was important I see you one more time before…” My words falter.
He steps forward, closing the distance between us, and my nerves catch fire. “Clara,” he says, his voice low, steady, but threaded with something tender. “You don’t know what this means to me. I thought I’d lost my chance to have just a few more hours with you.”
The truth of it rings through me. My pulse beats so loud it drowns out the ticking clock in the hall. I want to tell him I’m terrified, that guilt claws at me even as longing wins, that I don’tknow how to leave him now that I’ve tasted what it’s like to be wanted.
The house feels strange without the staff—too quiet, too intimate. Every creak of the floorboards as we move toward the sitting room reminds me that we are alone. Utterly, dangerously alone. Irene’s cleverness hangs in the air like a secret blessing, though my chest still trembles at the thought of what we’re about to risk.
The curtains are drawn, shutting out the last of the light. Only a few lamps glow, their soft amber haze settling across the room. I lower myself onto the edge of the settee, hands clasped tightly in my lap, while Marcel hovers just inside the doorway, hat twisting in his fingers. He looks like he’s trying to decide whether to sit or stand, whether to speak or stay silent.
Finally, he crosses the room, lowering himself into the chair opposite me. His eyes find mine. “I don’t know where to begin,” he admits.
“Neither do I,” I whisper. My voice trembles, but it feels like a relief to say it.
He leans forward. “Clara, I’ve tried—God, I’ve tried—to keep my distance. To be respectful. To remind myself that you belong to another man. But every time I see you, I feel like I can’t control my heart.” His jaw works as though the words are scraping him raw. “I can’t stop wanting you. And I can’t keep pretending it’s just friendship.”
Tears sting my eyes, sudden and hot. “You think I don’t feel the same?” My laugh is bitter, cracked. “I’ve spent every night since the Founder's Dance lying awake, aching because I know this—us—is impossible. And yet…” I clutch the folds of my dress, fighting for composure. “When I’m with you, I can’t regret a single moment. Even if it damns me.”
His breath shudders. He sits back, raking a hand through his curls. “Say it plain, Clara. Please. Do you feel what I feel?”
I swallow hard, my heart hammering against its cage. This is the line I’ve been too afraid to cross, the words I’ve locked behind my teeth. But I can’t hold them anymore.
“I do,” I whisper, tears spilling freely now. “I feel it, Marcel. I love you. And it terrifies me because I don’t know how to carry it once I leave.”
He exhales like I’ve knocked the air from him. For a moment, he only stares, his eyes shining, his chest rising and falling like the tide. Then, slowly, reverently, he presses a hand to his heart.
“I’ve loved you since that first dance, Clara Albright. And I’ll keep on loving you—even if all I’m left with is the memory of this summer.”
The room fills with our confessions circling between us, with the truth that’s finally free, raw, and luminous.
I press a hand to my mouth, my voice breaking around it. “What will we do, Marcel?”
He rises, crossing the space until he’s standing before me. He lowers to one knee, taking my trembling hands into his own. His voice is low, fervent.
“We’ll take what we can, Firefly. Whatever time we’re given. And we’ll make it enough.”
The moment those words leave his lips, something inside me breaks. All the restraint, all the fear, all the barriers snap under the weight of what I feel for him.
I tug his hands up, pulling him closer, and before either of us can think, my mouth crashes against his. The kiss is nothing like the shy, stolen touches we’ve shared before. It’s fire and hunger and longing crammed into a single breath. His hands rise to cup my face, strong and trembling, holding me like I might vanish if he loosens his grip.
A sound tears from my throat—half sob, half gasp—as his lips part mine, as his tongue sweeps past, tasting me, claiming me.My body arches toward his, desperate, aching, alive in ways I’ve only dreamed of. Every nerve sings his name.
When we break for air, I clutch at his shirt, dragging him back to me, my forehead pressed to his, my breath ragged and uneven. The words come tumbling out, raw and unpolished, torn straight from my soul.
“Take me, Marcel,” I whisper, my voice shaking with need. “Please…I want my first to be you. Forever, you.”
His eyes darken, wide with shock, with the kind of love that swallows a man whole. His breath stutters against my cheek, and he lets out the softest, most broken sound—as if he can’t believe what I’ve just given him.
“Clara,” he whispers, my name like a vow, like a prayer he’s carried for lifetimes. His thumb strokes my cheek, reverent even as his lips find mine again, hot and desperate, every kiss more consuming than the last.
“Are you sure?”
I nod, and in that moment, I know that there is no going back. It doesn’t matter what happens tomorrow, tonight belongs to us. And I will carry it in my bones until the day I die.
Reunion
Marcel 1986
The house is quiet,the kind of quiet that amplifies every sound—the creak of the stairs, the whisper of fabric as she takes my hand, the hammer of my heart as she leads me up to her room. I follow her like I’ve been following her my whole life.
