CHAPTER 68

CHAPTER 68
ARIA

The room was quiet again, save for the ragged cadence of our breaths slowly finding rhythm. 

I didn’t expect the silence after to feel this way.

Not empty. Not awkward. Not heavy.

I could still feel him everywhere. On my lips, on my skin, in the sore, tender places he had claimed. 

The sheets beneath us were tangled, damp with heat, but all I could think about was how close I could pull him, how much more of him I could press into me.

So I clung.

I pressed my cheek against the hard plane of his chest, my skin damp and sticky against his warmth. 

The sound of his heart thudded steadily beneath my ear, grounding me in a way that almost made me want to weep. 

For so long I had carried the hollow ache of loss—of missing him, of telling myself he was gone, dead, nothing more than memory—and now here he was. 

Solid. Real. Mine.

I should have felt sated, boneless, ready to drift into the softness of sleep. 

Instead, I clung to him with a fierceness that startled me. 

My nails dug faint crescents into his skin. I buried my face against him, breathing him in, desperate to memorise every inch, every sound, every smell before it could be taken away.

God, how had I lived without this? 

Without him?

The thought split something inside me, sharp and sudden. I had been telling myself for years that I’d learned to move forward, that I’d stitched myself together enough times to keep walking. 

But lying here, with his body still joined to mine, I knew I had been lying. 

I hadn’t moved on. 

I hadn’t healed. 

I’d been drifting, empty, always searching for something I couldn’t name—because it had always been him.

“Don’t,” I whispered, though I hadn’t meant to say it out loud. 

The word caught in my throat, choked by the sting of tears. My lips brushed his chest as the sound broke free again. 

“Don’t leave me again.”

My heart pounded unevenly against him, a panicked rhythm that refused to calm. 

My whole body felt too alert, too raw, even as exhaustion dragged at my eyelids. 

I was terrified of sleep. 

Terrified that if I gave in, I’d open my eyes to nothing but cold sheets and silence, like all of this had never happened.

I tightened my grip, pressing closer, desperate to memorise him with every part of me. 

His scent filled me—warm skin, faint sweat, that faint spice that was just him. His chest rose and fell against my cheek, steady, reassuring. 

I felt the rumble of his breath beneath my ear, low and even, grounding me in a way nothing else ever had.

A sob caught in my throat before I could stop it. I bit down on my lip, trying to swallow it, but the sound escaped anyway, muffled against his skin. 

His hand moved instantly, slow and steady, stroking down the line of my back. He said nothing, just touched me with that quiet certainty, as though he knew the storm inside me without needing words.

“I missed you,” I whispered, the confession tumbling out before I could choke it back. 

My voice sounded fragile, childlike even, cracking under the weight of everything I had been holding in. I clutched him tighter, the tremble in my arms betraying me. 

“I missed you so much it—God, it nearly destroyed me.”

His body shifted, just enough for him to press his face into my hair. His breath was warm against my scalp, steady, almost reverent. 

He didn’t rush to speak. 

Instead, his fingertips found my temple, brushing gently, a rhythm so calming it made my eyelids grow heavy even as my chest ached with the fear that if I blinked, he’d vanish.

“Lean,” I breathed, shaking my head, refusing the pull of sleep, refusing the thought of losing him again.

My hands flew up before I could stop them, clutching his face, my fingers curling into his jaw as though I could anchor him to me. The warmth of his skin burned against my palms, real and solid and mine.

And then—I kissed him.

Messy and desperate, my tears dampen both our lips. 

I didn’t care how I looked, how unguarded I was. All I cared about was the truth of this moment, the truth of finally having him close again.

He pulled back just enough to press his mouth to my ear, his breath hot against my skin.

“I’ve always been here,” he murmured.

The words pierced through every wall I’d built, every lie I’d told myself about moving on, about forgetting him. 

I sucked in a shaky breath, clutching him tighter, my nails digging into his back as though I could stitch him to me.

“I’ve always been here. Aria.”

My breath hitched, another tear slipping free and trailing down onto his chest. 

A sob rose, but I swallowed it, burying my face against his neck instead. 

His skin was damp, his heartbeat steady beneath my lips, and I wanted to live inside that rhythm forever.

“I thought I’d lost you forever,” I whispered, shaking my head.

His stubble scratched against my cheek, real and raw, and I held on as if to anchor myself. 

“I hated myself for letting you slip away. For not holding tighter, for not fighting harder. If I could change anything…” 

My throat closed up, strangling the words.

He caught my wrist, turned his head, and pressed a kiss to the inside of it. 

Simple. Quiet. 

And it broke me all over again.

I didn’t know if I imagined it, but I thought I felt his body soften then, some tension leaving his frame. 

His hands slid up into my hair, threading through it with a gentleness I hadn’t known I needed. 

The world outside could have crumbled, and I don’t think I would have cared.

All that mattered was this: his body heavy over mine, his heart steady under my ear, his hands telling me in ways his mouth didn’t need to.

I squeezed my eyes shut, pressing another kiss to his chest, murmuring against his skin like a vow. 

“Don’t leave me again. Please. I can’t…” The rest withered into silence, too dangerous to name.

His fingers swept across my forehead again, brushing away stray strands of hair, smoothing me with the care of someone trying to quiet a fever. 

The gesture was so tender, so achingly intimate, that it eased something raw inside me. 

The tremors in my body began to soften, my grip loosening not because I wanted to let him go but because my exhaustion was finally pulling me under.

The wine from earlier, the restless nights, the emotional storm—all of it pressed down on me like a tide. 

My limbs grew heavy, my breaths slower, yet I still fought it, blinking stubbornly against the weight of sleep. I didn’t want to close my eyes. 

Not when I had him again. 

Not when I feared I might wake and find it was all a dream.

But he kept stroking my forehead, his touch steady, his body a cocoon of warmth and strength around me. 

My lashes fluttered, drooped. I tried to protest, my lips parting to tell him no, not yet, but the words died as he bent to press one last kiss to the crown of my head.

“Rest,” his voice rumbled softly, the sound vibrating against my ear. 

“I’m here.”

And I believed him. 

For the first time in so long, I believed him.

The last thing I felt before sleep pulled me under was his hand in my hair, the other draped around my waist, holding me as though even in slumber, he would never let me go.