Page 214 of One of Those Amnesia Stories

I didn’t like seeing him like this. The fear that had been sitting in my chest for so long, the fear that everyone leaves, that I’m easy to leave, that it’s only a matter of time before the people I love decide I’m not worth staying for—it was real. But so was his pain. So was his desperation to make me understand that he wasn’t going anywhere.

My hand moved on its own. My arms came up. I wrapped them around him, pulled him closer, held him the way he was holding me. And something in my chest loosened. Something I’d been carrying for so long I’d forgotten it was there.

The fear was still there. It would probably always be there, buried somewhere deep where I’d learned to keep it. But for this moment, in this room, with his arms around me and his regret warm against my neck, it was quieter. Smaller. Something I could carry instead of something carrying me.

I couldn’t believe I was thinking about it. Actually thinking about it. Wanting it.

I want to give him another chance.

Even though I had decided, after everything, never to give anyone another chance.

But I had given my mother a chance, hadn’t I? Against all logic, against all precedent. And we texted now, sometimes. It didn’t hurt the way it used to. Didn’t irritate me the way it used to. Because I believed her. Because she had shown me, in her clumsy, flawed way, that she was sincere.

I believed Cassian too.

I had been believing him for months, in small ways. In the way he showed up. In the way he never stopped trying. In the way he looked at me like I was worth the effort, even when I gave him nothing to hold onto.

He was genuine. He was here. He was staying.

And I wanted to let him stay.

I pulled back from the hug to look at him. His eyes were red, his face still wet, his expression still raw from everything we’d just said. He opened his mouth. “I’m sorry—”

My hand found the back of his head. My fingers threaded through his hair. I pulled him down and crashed my lips into his.

For two seconds, he was frozen. Two seconds of stunned silence where I felt his breath catch, felt the shape of his mouth against mine, felt the exact moment his brain caught up to what was happening.

Then his hands found me.

One hand slipped around my waist, his fingers curling into the fabric of my shirt as he pulled me against him. His other hand cradled the side of my neck, his palm warm against my skin as he lifted my face and deepened the kiss. His mouth moved against mine, meeting me with the same urgency I felt.

It was the kiss of a man who had been waiting, hoping, starving for months and had finally been given permission to eat.

He kissed me with everything he had been unable to say. Every confession trapped behind his teeth, every feeling he had carried alone, poured into the kiss. His lips moved against mine, urgent and searching, his arms pulling me closer and closer, until the space between us disappeared. He kissed me with the fierce need to make up for every missed moment in a single breathless rush.

Something ignited in my chest. A heat that started in my chest and spread through my limbs, through my fingers, through every part of me that had been waiting for this without knowing I was waiting.

His tongue brushed my lower lip. I opened for him without thinking. The sound I made—a moan, low and surprised—was swallowed by his mouth. He groaned in response, the vibration traveling through me, settling somewhere deep. My hand tightened on his back, fisting his shirt, pulling him impossibly closer.

He poured everything into that kiss. The months of waiting. The terror of almost losing me. The hope that had kept him reaching for me, kept him fighting to earn his way back, kept him believing that one day I might finally let him in again.

I pulled back, breathless. My lips tingled, my skin warm, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. I tried to find the words, tried to remember what I wanted to say. His lips followed mine, chasing me, not ready to let me go.

“Wait.” I pressed a hand to his chest. “We need to talk.”

His attention stayed fixed on my lips. “Yes,” he murmured, already closing the small space between us. “Talk.”

He kissed me again. There was hunger in the way his mouth met mine, in the way his hands pulled me closer, but beneath it ran a fear he couldn’t hide. The fear that I would change my mind. The fear that this was a dream he was about to wake up from. The fear that if he let go, he’d never get this back. I kissed him back, because I couldn’t help it. Because his mouth on mine was the only thing that made sense. Because for the first time in so long, I wasn’t thinking. I was just feeling.

I pulled back again, my chest heaving. “Wait—”

He was breathing so heavily, his chest rising and falling against mine, his eyes still fixed on my mouth.

“Cassian.” I pressed my palm flat against his chest, felt the wild hammer of his heart. “Look at me.”

His gaze flickered up to mine. Then down to my lips. Back to mine. Down again. He couldn’t help it. He was trying, I could see him trying, but every time he looked at my mouth, something in his expression softened, and I knew if he kept looking, I was going to kiss him again.

His eyes met mine. Held. For a breath, a heartbeat, an impossible stretch of time.