I take it.
The second his fingers close around mine, something inside me gives way all at once. Two years of careful distance, of restraint, of timing and rules, and everything we told ourselves we had to survive before we could have this. It all rushes out of my system in one violent, breath-stealing wave.
He pulls me in, my face pressed against the leather of his cut, and his arm wraps around me with a solidity that feels like an answer to every question I’ve ever had about where I belong. I feel the weight of the patch under my cheek, the warmth of him beneath it, the slow, grounded rhythm of his heartbeat.
“Anchor,” I murmur into the leather.
“Yeah,” he says softly above my head.
“It suits you.”
His arm tightens just enough to make my lungs stutter.
I lift my head.
There’s a moment, a suspended, electric second, where everything narrows down to the space between our mouths. His gaze drops to mine, dark, steady, and completely wrecked, like the control he’s carried for years has finally split straight down the middle. Something sparks low in my stomach. Something wild, relieved, and long overdue.
His hand comes up, rough and sure as it frames my jaw, holding me there. “Mine,” he says, low and certain. Not a question.Not even close.The word hits like a pulse through me, sharp and immediate, something in my chest opening so fast it almost hurts.
His thumb brushes once beneath my eye, catching the last of the tears I didn’t know were still there. “You’re my Old Lady.”
It lands deeper than the word before it. Something inside me that has been braced for so long finally gives way all at once, a release so sudden it steals the air from my lungs.
Relief.
Relief so deep it feels like I’ve been holding my breath for so long and only just now remembered how to let it go. My hand fists in the front of his cut, gripping the leather like I need to anchor myself to the reality of it.
To him.
To this.
Tous.
I lean into him without thinking, my forehead brushing his, my breath unsteady, and I don’t even try to hide it.
“Yes,” I whisper, the word soft but absolute. And the way my chest settles, the way everything inside me goes certain, tells me this isexactlywhere I was always meant to end up.
I don’t think, neither does he.
We collide somewhere in the middle.
It’s not soft, or tentative, or the careful, measured kind of kiss we have allowed ourselves before. This is release, heat, all thebuilt-up gravity of two people who have been orbiting each other for so long that the impact feels inevitable.
His hand slides up the back of my neck, fingers threading into my hair, anchoring me there as his mouth takes mine with an almost startling hunger. I feel the room react around us, the sharp intake of breath, the laughter starting somewhere behind my shoulder, someone swearing in delight, but it barely registers.
My hands fist in his cut, gripping the leather as if it’s the only solid thing left in the world, while his tongue sweeps into my mouth and I answer him instinctively, desperately, as if we are finally allowed to stop pretending we don’t belong here.
It feels like fireworks.
Like oxygen.
Like something breaking open and healing at the exact same time.
He makes a low, rough sound against my lips that goes straight through me, and I feel him shift closer, his body crowding mine, unapologetic, grounding, entirely himself now that he doesn’t have to hold back.
When we finally drag apart, it’s not graceful. It’sbreathless, messy, and real, our foreheads knocking lightly together as we both try to remember how to exist in a room that has suddenly become very aware of us.
His thumb brushes my cheek. “Been waiting a long time for that,” he murmurs.
