Chapter 90: Comfort in His Arms
Lisa’s POV
The ride home is quiet.
A mild and pleasant silence, like a tune that doesn't require lyrics. The sort you relax into, rather than resist.
I sit in the passenger seat, watching the city lights outside the window while Leo’s hands remain firmly on the steering wheel. He doesn’t say much. He doesn’t have to. There’s something about his presence that’s different tonight… heavier, more grounded. Like he’s thinking too. Like he’s carrying the same realization I am.
That something shifted between us today.
At a red light, he looks at me. Not for a long time. Just a second. But for that brief moment, everything in the world seems to be compressed into the distance between us.
“You okay” he asks himself.
I nod. “Yeah… just tired. In a good way, though.” In a good way, though.”
He smiles slightly. “Same.”
We pull into the driveway, and when we come inside the house, the silence hails us once more—but this time it’s a little warmer. Familiar. Friendly. The house doesn’t seem so large anymore. It seems to be holding a collective breath with us.
“I’ll get us some water,” he says, putting his keys down.
“You don’t have to —”
“I want to.”
That one simple sentence unravels something inside me. I watch him vanish into the kitchen and hear the clatter of glasses, the gentle murmur of water running, and my chest tightens for no reason. This isn’t grand romance. It’s not fireworks, or full orchestras. It’s something a little bit softer. Less intense.
And for some reason, it seems more potent.
When he comes back, I’m sitting on the couch, he gives me a glass and sits down next to me, so close our shoulders brush.
The point of contact is so small, yet its warmth spreads all over me.
In silence, we drink the water.
“I’m proud of you, you know,” he says after a moment.
“For what?”
“For today. For everything.” You were amazing in that meeting. I think everybody finally sees what I’ve always known.”
I peek over at him. “You’ve always known?”
He shrugs. “I just didn’t say it out loud enough.”
The rawness in his voice twists something in my chest.
“You were incredible too,” I whisper. “There were points at which I lost track of who else was in the room.”
He blinks a little, his eyes now wider. “Me too. ”
Between us, the air thickens, but it’s not heavy, it is charged. Intent. We stay still at first. We just sit, the silence around us expanding like a shell of warmth. The tension of the day slips out of my muscles gradually. My head feels heavier.
My eyelids nearly give in. “You can lie down if you want,” he murmurs. “The bed?” I ask tenderly. “Here is fine.”
I pause for only a second. Not that I don’t want to – because I want it more than I’m ready to say. Then, little by little, I turn towards him and lower myself until my head is resting on his chest.
The moment I push my ear to him, I stop.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
His heartbeat.
Steady. Strong. Real.
A weird peace envelops my body. It’s like a lifetime of freaking out is magically calmed by that one, easy sound pattern.
“Are you all right?” he whispers over me.
“Mhm… just… don’t move.”
He chuckled softly. “I wasn’t planning on it.”
For a second, I drift back — back to nights when silence was menacing, not comforting, when I lay there hearing for footsteps that never joined me in my dreams, for sounds that had long since left my existence. I thought about how dark and empty this room used to be when all I could sense around me were the cold winter winds against my skin and how the emptiness made way for new fears every single time.
And now here I am pressed up against him, holding onto his warmth and listening to the proof of life under my cheek. It is too much, almost. I swallow hard, blink back the tear that has suddenly formed in my eye, realize how far I’ve come. How far we’ve come.
The thought settles gently into my heart: Maybe healing isn’t always loud and dramatic. Maybe sometimes it sounds like a heartbeat and feels like home.
He moves just enough to drape a throw blanket over us, his arm hanging cautiously around my shoulders as if I’m made of glass. It’s protective but gentle, possessive but patient.
And I melt in ways I never even thought I could melt anymore.
For so long, I’d taught myself not to want to be touched. Not to need it. Not to bank on it. But now, as I lie here with the steady rise and fall of his chest beneath my cheek, I recognize how much I’ve been missing no other thing more than this: comfort. Safety. Presence.
“It’s weird,” I say under my breath.
“What is?”
“How can something so simple feel so ...” I trail off, looking for a word. “Important.”
“Maybe it was always that simple,” he says with a smile. “We just made it too hard.”
I tilt my head a little so I can see him better. The sharpness of his features has softened, replaced by something warmer, something… vulnerable.
“You make me feel safe, Leo,” I confess, the words leaving my lips before I can think better of saying them.
He is breathing differently. “You make me feel like I’m coming home from long way off,” says he. The admission hangs over me, encompassing my heart.
We don’t say another word after that. Words seem unnecessary. The silence becomes sacred. His thumb is brushing gently, absentminded, in lazy circles on my shoulder and my body is relaxing even more, falling deeper into him.
Time slips.
Minutes? An hour?
I don’t know.
All I know is the steady rhythm beneath me never changes. His heartbeat becomes my lullaby, a constant sign that he is here.
That’s real. And that we’re finally in the same place, not just physically, but emotionally.
For the first time in years, sleep comes to me easily.
And despite feeling like I’m about to nod off and drift away if I stop holding up my eyelids, there’s this one thought that’s just quietly droning away at the back of my mind: If this is what home feels like… I never want to leave.
And when I barely look up half asleep, I feel him move his head and rest it atop mine. His lips lightly graze my hair but don’t kiss it fully, yet the movement is quite intimate.
“Sleep, Lisa,” he whispers. “I got you.”
And I believe him.
Completely.