Riot was quiet for a moment. His fingers found Cass’s and laced through them, squeezing once.
Cass lay still, listening to Riot’s heartbeat. His body was warm everywhere they touched and cool everywhere they didn’t, and the difference made Cass want to press closer to eliminate all the cool places until there was nothing left but warmth.
The warmth was different from heat.
Heat was what his body did—the sweating and the cramping and the slick and the desperate need that turned his thoughts to static. Heat was something that happened to him.
But this warmth, Riot’s skin against his, the weight of Riot’s arm across his back, the way Riot’s thumb kept moving in slow circles like he couldn’t stop touching Cass even when the urgency was gone—this was something else. This was the after. The quiet that came when the wanting had been answered and what remained was just...this person. Right here. Exactly this person.
The Elders had talked about what love felt like for a sacred partner, a rush of divine certainty, the feeling of two halves clicking into spiritual completion. They’d described it in meditation sessions and painted designation energies merging into transcendent wholeness.
Cass had waited years to feel it with Honey. Through every meditation. Every prayer circle. Every session with Brother Matthias where the pain was supposed to burn away whatever was blocking the connection. He’d waited and waited and it never came, and he’d thought the problem was him. That he was too broken, too deficient, too much of a spiritual failure to feel what everyone said he was supposed to feel.
But this was it. This was the feeling they’d described.
I love him.
The thought arrived the way most of Cass’s important thoughts arrived—not built piece by piece through analysis, but whole. Like something that had always been there and had just been waiting for him to notice it.
“Riot?”
“Yeah?” His voice was a low rumble under Cass’s cheek. Cass could feel it vibrate through his chest before it became sound.
“I think I love you.”
The words came out simpler than he’d planned. He’d been thinking something about the Elders and Honey and sacred resonance and algorithms, but his mouth skipped all of that and had gone straight to the center. Riot’s heartbeat kicked. One hard thump under Cass’s ear, then another. Then the arm across Cass’s back went very, very still.
“I think I love you the way the Elders wanted me to love Honey,” Cass continued, because the silence was getting big and he needed to fill it before it got too heavy to move. “I think this is what they were describing. Except they said it would come from our spirits and it didn’t. It came from you.”
He could feel Riot’s pulse going faster now. But Riot wasn’t speaking.
“I’m sorry if that’s not...” Cass swallowed. “If it’s not right. I know you said—I mean, I know things are complicated, and we’re in the middle of—and I don’t even know if I’m using the word correctly because everything I was taught about love was...” He trailed off. Started again. “But my body knows. And you said I should listen to my body.”
Still nothing. Riot’s hand had stopped its circles on his back. His breathing had gone shallow and careful, the way it did when he was fighting to hold something back.
“Riot?”
“Yeah.” His voice sounded different. Thicker. “I heard you.”
“Okay.” Cass pressed his forehead into Riot’s chest. “You don’t have to say anything. I just wanted you to know. In case something goes wrong and I never —”
“Cass.”
“— get to say it, and I’d just be thinking about how I should have told you when —”
“Cass.”
Riot’s hand came up and cupped the back of his head, fingers threading into his hair, and pulled him up so they were face to face. In the dim light, Riot’s eyes were green again.
“You’re not using the word wrong,” Riot said. His voice cracked on the last word and he didn’t try to fix it. “You’re using it exactly right.”
“Oh.” Cass blinked. “Does that mean …?”
“It means I love you too, you impossible fucking person.” It came out rough and raw and cracked down the middle, like something that had been locked in a box for a very long time and had gotten damaged in storage.
It was the most beautiful thing Cass had ever heard, and he didn’t even flinch.
“Okay,” Cass said. “Good.”
