Page 95 of Knot the Last Chapter

She nods, focusing a little too intently on wiping a glass. “Yeah. I did.”

I wait for more, but that’s all she offers. Still, it’s enough to make me smile.

“Good. No one should be left wondering where the people they love have gone.”

There’s a pause. A subtle shift in the air. Her hand stills for just a beat before she nods again, softer this time.

“I agree.”

We fall into quiet again, the kind that isn’t awkward but lived-in. Misty hops onto the counter briefly, tail flicking, and Lila gently shoos her off with a soft coo. The cat obeys, but not without shooting me a smug look over her shoulder, like she knows she’s allowed to stay if she wants to.

I wonder if Lila realizes how much she’s changed the feel of this house. Before her, the rooms were just wood and stone and memory. But now they hum. Now they breathe. Like she’s lit something in all of us that we didn’t even know we were missing.

And I can’t stop thinking about kissing her. About that deep, consuming moment in the pantry—her body against mine, the taste of her breath, the way she sighed into my mouth like it meant something.

Because it did. It still does.

“Hey,” I say gently, when we finally set the last dish on the drying rack. “You should rest. I’ve got the rest of clean up.”

She looks up at me with those wide, thoughtful eyes, and shakes her head. “Actually… I missed movie night the other day, remember?”

I nod.

“I was thinking… maybe we could do one tonight? Maybe an action movie? All of us?”

That little flicker in my chest flares to full flame. The hope. The want. That bone-deep craving to spend more time with her, to be close without asking for more than she can give.

“I’d love that,” I say.

She smiles, and it’s like sunrise breaking through fog.

Before I can move to find Corwyn and Tyler, she steps toward me, a half-laugh caught in her throat, and says, “But before you go…”

I know what’s coming before it happens.

Her lips find mine—slow and sure and so much deeper than our first kiss. There’s no hesitation, no question. Just her hands in my shirt and my arms sliding around her waist, lifting her slightly off her feet as I pour everything I’m feeling into the kiss.

She’s fire and silk and starlight.

And she tastes like home.

When we finally part, breathless and stunned, I keep my forehead against hers, my hand around the back of her neck.

“You’re incredible,” I whisper.

She closes her eyes, just for a second. I can feel her pulse in her throat, racing beneath my fingers.

“I wanted to say thank you,” she murmurs. “For everything.”

“You don’t have to thank me,” I say. “You’ve already given me more than I thought I’d find in this house again.”

She opens her eyes, and something flickers there—something like guilt, or sadness. But before I can ask, she breaks away with a soft laugh and says, “I’ll go start gathering snacks.”

And just like that, she’s moving again—alive and luminous, like the quiet never touched her.

But I stand there for a long while, hand still pressed to the space she just occupied, wondering what it is she isn’t saying.

Wondering what happens when the storm ends for real… and she has to choose in which direction her story will go.