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I glance over toward the windows at the sound of a crash outside, then turn away again. The storm is really picking up. A flash illuminates the sky outside and out of the corner of my eye, something moves on the balcony. My heart leaps into my throat.
I jump, scrambling up onto my knees on the bed and freeze facing the windows. Is that someone out there, or is it just a strange shadow? I squint, then nearly topple over when a rapping sounds on the glass.
My heart beats faster, my anxiety giving way to excitement as I creep closer to the doors. I can’t make out anything outside, but there’s only one person who has ever climbed my balcony.
I open the door to let him in, then I glance, terrified, over my shoulder toward the door to my room and at the last second step out onto the balcony instead.
I wrap my arms around myself, wishing I’d grabbed a sweater. The freezing wind is howling, dead leaves blowing everywhere, and another enormous clap of thunder says that the rain is almost on us. The air tastes of the nearby ocean rolling in on the clouds.
I look up at Roman, and my heart aches. I wish he wasn’t always so hauntingly beautiful, dark eyes barely visible in this light, black hair falling in his face. He's wearing a wool overcoat over one of his seemingly endless supply of sweaters.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asks looking down at me in my thin pajamas.
Ooph.I can already feel that this is going to hurt. I glance down at my feet. “Thin walls and everyone’s home. Anyway, I could ask you the same thing.”
He scribbles a warming rune over me and his lip turns up in a half smile. “I wanted to talk to you.”
“And you couldn’t do that over the phone?” I say peevishly.
It’s not even that I prefer the phone to him being here—although, if this is going to be a painful conversation I would have preferred it not be face to face. It’s that I want to point out he didn’t text me back.
“No,” he says without inflection. “Because I’m kind of hoping you’ll come somewhere with me.”
My heart starts to pound. “Where?”
Another flash of lightning crosses the sky followed immediately by thunder, practically in the same breath. The first few drops of rain fall on my cheeks, the water weighing my eyelashes.
Roman doesn’t answer my question directly. “I went to see your aunt again.”
“What?” I hiss. I expressly told him I didn’t want to keep pushing her. Even if I was angry. Even if it crushed me. “Why would you do that?”
His eyes glint with the first serious emotion tonight. “Because you were going to just walk away.”
“Yes,” I snap. “Because I didn’t want to hurt her, and because it wouldn’t have mattered, anyway.”
“Well, you might care about that moral fucking high ground shit, but I don’t and lucky for you, good girl, I’m selfish and all I need is to give you everything you want.”
My chest constricts at the words and I don’t think I’d be able to feel the cold even without the rune.
He’s always saying things like that—things that are almost impossible to misinterpret, yet aren’t exactly what I want to hear. Meanwhile, I’m no better, never saying anything real at all.
Cat's words had resonated with me—that it's my turn to say how I feel.
I tilt my head back to meet his gaze, raindrops sliding down my cheeks like tears. The pitter-patter of the rain fills the silence, and nothing else exists except for him and me.
He looks at me with that intensity in his eyes, like he’s trying to read my thoughts. He knows all too well that I have yet to tell him how I really feel, but here in this moment, it seems he’s willing to wait—that he gets what I can’t bring myself to say.
I step forward almost entirely closing the distance between us and his hands come up instinctively to rest on my back. His palms are warm despite the chill in the air, and I sink into his embrace. His arms encircle me tightly as if he never wants to let go; a reassurance that he won’t leave no matter what I have to say.
I take a deep breath mustering up every bit of courage within me before whispering softly into the night air: “I love you.”
Roman pulls away just enough so we can look each other in the eye, a small smile tugs at his lips as if these mere words are enough for him. He dips his head down until our foreheads meet, our noses grazing against each other. "Thank the fucking gods."
I choke, something like a laugh and an indignant huff coming out of me at once. "Seriously?"
His mouth hovers over mine, lips barely grazing, as if leaving the decision up to me. "In case it isn't obvious, good girl, I love you. I've always loved you, for years, even though it was slowly killing me. That isn't even a large enough word for how much I need you. You're the only fucking thing that matters to me, and I'm trying not to scare you with how, if I had my way, I'd lock you up and never let you leave because I need you to breathe."
My throat constricts as my eyes drift down to his lips and back up to his eyes. They’re filled with desire and want and a hunger for me. I lean in, closing the last millimeters between us, then I press my mouth to his.
