Tears spill freely down my cheeks now, and he kisses them away, slow and reverent, like each one is sacred.
“I love you, Nazareth. So much, it scares me.”
“And I’ll do everything in my power to make sure it stops scaring you.”
Another kiss, deeper this time as he lays me back on the carpet with a gentleness that makes my chest ache. There’s no rush. No bruising grip or filthy promises. Just him—moving over me like I’m something holy he’s terrified of breaking.
His hands tremble as they slide down my sides, then he gathers my wrists to pin them above my head, and he just looks at me. Really looks. Blue eyes trace every inch of my skin like he’s memorizing me, like he’s trying to commit the sight of me soft and open beneath him to memory so he can carry it with him into the dark.
“Every man I've ever been—the weapon, the ghost, the thing Valeria made—none of them deserve you. I'm trying to find the one that does.”
I cup his face, fingers on the scar I’ve come to love. “You think I fell in love with who you could be. I fell in love with who you are right now. Right here. With me.”
Something shifts in his expression—the hard lines dissolving one by one, like a wall coming down brick by brick, until what's left is just him. Raw and open and completely unguarded in a way I've only seen in fragments until now.
And then he looks at me like I just handed him something he'd stopped believing existed. Leans down and kisses me—not claiming, not devouring, butworshipping. Slow, deep, lingering kisses that taste like yesterday, today, and forever at the same time. His mouth moves from my lips to my jaw, down the column of my throat, pressing open-mouthed kisses over my racing pulse like he can calm it with devotion alone.
When he finally settles between my thighs, he doesn’t push inside right away. He rests his forehead against mine, breathing me in, letting the weight of him press me into the carpet in the most tender cage I’ve ever known.
“I’ll never stop until we have forever.” He pushes inside me, eyes locked on mine the entire time. I feel every inch. Every breath. Every heartbeat. He doesn’t just fill my body—he fills the hollow places inside my chest, the cracks I didn’t know were there.
“Stay with me,” I whisper against his mouth as he moves, deep and unhurried, like he’s trying to memorize the way we fit together. “Even when you’re gone… stay with me.”
“I’m right here, baby,” he breathes, hips rolling in that devastatingly tender rhythm. “I’ve always been right here.”
Tears slip down my temples into my hair. Every slow thrust feels like a vow. Every kiss against my throat, my collarbone, my lips—a promise he’s carving into my soul.
This isn’t just sex.
This is him loving me so completely that I start to believe maybe, just maybe, we’ll win.
I come with his name on my lips and tears on my tongue, and he follows right after, burying his face in my neck, whispering my name like it’s the only prayer he’ll ever need.
For a long time afterward, we stay tangled together, hearts pounding against each other, sweat and tears cooling on our skin.
He doesn’t pull out. He stays buried inside me, arms wrapped around me like he can shield me from the future that’s already coming for us. And I let myself believe—just for this moment—that love like this might actually be strong enough to survive it.
Maybe.
Dear Nazareth,
I figured it out today.
Not the way you figure something out when you've been working toward it—when the answer arrives because you did the math correctly and followed every step.
More like the way you figure something out when you've been actively avoiding it and your body just stops cooperating with the avoidance.
I'm in love with you.
I don't know exactly when it started. Maybe in the dining room with Paris and the cherry blossoms. Maybe the first time you kissed me. Or maybe in the shower when you showed me all your broken parts.
Maybe it was always going to be this way and the timeline is irrelevant.
What I know is that it terrifies me.
Not you. Never you.
But this—the size of it. The way it doesn't leave room for anything else. The way I catch myself planning a future in thesame breath I remind myself I don't know when you're coming back. If you’re coming back.
