He stared at me like I’d just given him back something he’d thought was lost.
“I thought I was being clear,” I added, my voice cracking a little. “But maybe I wasn’t.”
Leo’s breath hitched. His voice broke on the words. “I love you too. Gods, so much.”
Leo’s hands tightened in mine. Like he couldn’t let go, even if he wanted to. He pulled me into him like he couldn’t bear to be apart another second. And I let him. Gods, I let him.
His lips crashed into mine—desperate, unfiltered, raw.
I gasped, but he didn’t hesitate—just deepened it, tilting his head to devour more. His hands cupped my jaw, his thumbs brushing my cheeks like I was something precious, something he thought he’d lost.
I moaned into him, fingers knotting in his shirt as I pulled him closer—closer still—until I could feel every breath he took like it belonged to me.
His kiss was heat and hunger, unspoken pain and unshaken devotion. It said everything he hadn’t dared to. Everything I hadn’t let myself hope for.
My back hit the wall before I realised he’d moved us. His thigh pressed between mine. His mouth trailed lower—to my jaw, to the corner of my throat.
“Leo,” I whispered, breathless.
He pulled back just enough to meet my eyes. “I thought I lost you,” he said, voice wrecked. “Don’t let me lose you again.”
“You never lost me, Leo. I was always here.” I reached up, cupping his face. “You’re my light, Leo. You crashed into my life like a cannonball back in Varrowmere. And now I can’t go back—not to who I was before you.”
He closed his eyes, leaning into my touch like he couldn’t bear not to.
I looked to Slade.
He stood now, arms crossed again—but something had shifted. Less guarded. Less stone.
“If you don’t feel the same—”
“Don’t.” His voice cut clean—calm, steady, but firm. “Don’t say that like I haven’t been choosing you every godsdamn day.”
I swallowed hard.
“I’m not good with words,” he said, voice lower now. “I don’t say things first. I don’t always knowhow.But if you’re standing there wondering if I feel the same…”
“Then you haven’t been paying attention.”
He stepped forward without a word and crushed his mouth to mine.
It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t restrained. It was a claiming.
I gasped into him as his hands slid from my jaw to my hips, gripping me like he couldn’t stand not touching me. His kiss was all tongue and teeth and tension finally snapped.
I rose to meet him, fingers threading into his hair, dragging him closer. His chest met mine with a low growl in his throat. My legs buckled and he caught me without breaking the kiss, pulling me flush against him.
I could feel everything—his breath, his heat, the way he trembled slightly like he was barely holding it together.
“Slade…” I whispered against his lips.
And in the silence that followed—there was no emptiness.
Only gravity.
It was full. Almost.
Only one person still remained missing. Only one person could have made the moment perfect.
