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“Just stay. You don’t have to leave—”

“I cannot live like this. You might be able to but I can’t.”

“It’s better than nothing—”

“No, it isn’t. You and I will never be happy if we keep doing this. We’ll only make it harder on ourselves living together and make everybody mad in the process. What is even the point?”

He stared at me bleakly.

“You’re telling me that we can’t be together,” I said. “That it will never be okay. And meanwhile you’re ghosting your friends and for what? So I can live across the hall? Be your roommate? You did what you wanted to do, you got me on my feet. I’m okay now, get back to your life.”

“I don’t want that life—”

“Then what the hell do you want?!” I threw up my hands. “Somebody is going to get hurt. No matter what we do, someone will lose.” I shook my head. “I guess the least selfish thing would be for it to be us.” I took the handle of my luggage. “Call me in a few years when you’re ready.” I started edging past him.

He stopped me in the doorframe. “Larissa, please.”

He looked devastated. I peered up at him, my heart breaking.

“Maybe this isn’t the kind of love that deserves to exist,” I whispered. “Maybe it’s the kind that wars start over. The kind that topples empires and never leaves the world better than it found it.”

His gaze bore into mine and I saw the exact moment he gave up.

“Then let it all burn.”

He closed the gap between us and kissed me.

49

LARISSA

For a moment his hands hovered a fraction of an inch from my face like he was still afraid to touch me. Then he closed the distance and softly cupped my cheeks in his warm palms and it was all over. I was sand between his fingers. I was his girlfriend and his wife. I was the mother of his children, the witness to his existence, the last word he breathed. All in one second. All in one kiss.

I don’t know how we thought we could fight this. Nobody could.

I dropped the handle to my luggage and wrapped my arms around his neck and he backed me into the doorframe, kissing me hungrily, like a man who’d just given up trying to starve himself.

I wanted to climb him, bite him, tear off his clothes. I wanted to do all the things I couldn’t do for so long, run my hands over every inch of his body, snuggle him, taste him, watch him sleep.

But more than that, I wanted to take care of him. Be for him what he was for everyone else, give him what he deserved, the life he deserved. I cherished him. Every part of him. Because he was worthy of it.

He broke away after a few minutes to catch his breath.

“I love you,” I whispered.

“I love you too,” he breathed. “I’m terrible at not loving you.”

“Don’t ever get good at it.”

I tilted my head up and kissed him again.

He drew my bottom lip between his teeth and sucked gently. A shallow inhale, and then opening, nipping, his tongue brushing mine. We whispered and smiled and breathed each other in. He twisted my hair absently in his fingers, took breaks to nuzzle my neck and graze his mouth along my jaw.

I slid my hands down his chest and pulled up the bottom of his sweatshirt. I ran a palm across the heat of the bare skin of his stomach and felt his body react under my touch and his breath hitch. Then his hand moved over my hip, slid behind my knee, and wrapped my leg around his waist. He lifted me against him and carried me to his room.

I don’t know how we thought we could fight this. But I was glad we’d finally stopped trying.

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