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I seize it like a man dying of thirst.
“I didn’t want to hurt you. That’s the truth. That’s the whole ugly fucking truth. And I swear on every joke I’ve ever made and every bad pickup line I’ve ever unleashed on the world, I only said what we were all too scared to say. But that doesn’t meanI didn’t feel like I’d ripped something sacred apart the second your face changed.”
I shift forward on my knees. Reach for her hand. She doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t give it to me either. Just lets me hover there like a fool waiting for absolution.
“You make me want to be good. And I don’t have a fucking clue how to be good, Luna. Not with all this inside me.” I thump a fist against my chest. “But I love you. And I’m going to love you even when you hate me. Especially when you hate me. That’s probably when I’ll love you most.”
I risk a look up. Her lashes are spiked with unshed tears, but her mouth is still hard, her silence louder than any shout.
I break.
“You want me to say it again?” I whisper. “You want to hear it like it’s the first time, not buried beneath a dozen bad jokes and distractions?” I breathe deep. Let it wreck me. “I love you. You. Luna fucking Evernight. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anything. More than pranks. More than Elias, don’t tell him I said that, and more than my own fucking life. And I’m sorry. I am so goddamn sorry.”
I bow my head to the ground. And wait. Because if she doesn’t forgive me… I’ll still mean every word.
Her voice hits me like a slap and a balm at the same time.
“Get up, you idiot.”
I lift my head. She’s standing over me, arms crossed, brow arched like I’ve offended her by groveling this long. Her mouth curves, not into a smile, no, Luna doesn’t do mercy like that. It’s worse. She looks amused.
“I stopped being mad at you a while ago,” she says, and then shrugs. “And then I was just… messing with you.”
I blink. “Messing with me?”
She rolls her eyes like I’m the most exhausting creature she’s ever laid eyes on, and she’s not wrong. “You practically cried on my boots, Silas.”
“I did not cry,” I lie. “That was sweat. From emotional exertion.”
She kneels in front of me, slow and deliberate, and now we’re level. Her gaze doesn’t soften, not really. It sharpens, in that way only she can, cutting straight through every defense I try to hold up.
“Next time,” she says, quiet now, “don’t pick the short straw if you can’t handle the burn.”
“I could handle the burn,” I mutter, but she’s already reaching for me, fingers curling into the front of my shirt. “I just didn’t know it’d feel like acid in my lungs when you stopped looking at me.”
That earns me a pause. She stares at me a second too long, her mouth twitching, not in amusement anymore but something else, something warmer. Something dangerous.
“You’re the worst,” she breathes.
“I try.”
Then she leans in and kisses me.
It’s not soft. It’s not gentle. It’s punishment and forgiveness all at once. It tastes like ash and her fury and the impossible sweetness of being loved back. My hands find her waist like they always do, like they were made for it, and I groan into her mouth, half-relieved, half-starving.
When we break apart, I rest my forehead against hers.
“You’re stuck with me,” I whisper. “Like a parasite. The sexy kind.”
“You’re a lot of things,” she says. “Sexy isn’t one of them.”
“Rude.”
She hums, and for the first time in what feels like days, I see it, that spark in her. That heat. That affection she pretends not to drown in when she’s near me.
Behind us, I hear someone gag dramatically.
Elias.