Chapter 26 Yearning
RYAN'S POV
My brain does this thing where it reduces moments to a single word, like it’s trying to make them manageable. Containable. That first night at the Book Forum, it was awe. Clean and sharp and terrifying in how immediate it was. The next morning, when Michael showed up at school....nerves. The kind that sit just under the skin. At the coffee shop it was ease, unexpected and dangerous in how natural it felt, like slipping into warm water without testing the temperature first. Last night in the park, it was peaceful. Quiet. Settled. Something I didn’t realize I’d been starving for.
And in this moment—yearning.
Not the soft, romantic kind. Not the distant ache you can ignore if you keep busy. This one is aggressive and physical. It presses against my throat, demanding space it knows it won’t be given. It hurts in a way that’s almost humiliating, how badly I want. How loudly my body is asking for something my mind keeps trying to veto.
My eyes keep drifting back to his mouth. They were softer than I expected....his lips. I don’t know why that surprises me, but it does. The kiss has been replaying in my head on a loop ever since we left the school, stripped of context, reduced to sensation. The way it felt. The way it stopped.
There are only a few inches between us now. Practically nothing. An insignificant distance, really. And yet it feels enormous. Like a canyon. Like something that could swallow me whole if I misstep.
A few minutes ago, my thoughts had gone somewhere dark. They do that sometimes, uninvited. I’d been thinking about how if my illness takes over completely, and it feels more like a when than an if, Ember will have no one.
Because I have no one.
My plants will dry up, one by one, leaves curling in quiet surrender. There are books on my shelves I bought with excitement, convinced I’d get to them eventually. What happens to them? Who decides where they go? What’s left in my fridge? In my cabinets? Food I bought knowing I’d finish it. Assuming a future that might not cooperate.
It’s a lonely inventory. A life measured by leftovers.
The weight of it makes my chest ache, so I lean forward before I can talk myself out of it, pressing my forehead gently to Michael’s. My eyes close. I breathe in, and his scent fills the space.
“You smell really nice,” I murmur softly, the words slipping out without permission.
I wonder what a hug from him would feel like. I think it would feel right and steady. Like something I could rest in. The thought hits harder than I expect, and I realize I can’t remember the last time I hugged someone. Really hugged them. Or when someone held me like they meant it.
Michael stays still and silent. I imagine I’ve caught him off guard, confused by this sudden closeness, this quiet unraveling.
“I don’t remember,” I whisper.
“What?”
“My last hug,” I say, my voice barely there. “I don’t remember when it was. Or who it was with.”
The admission is fragile and exposed.
Michael leans back just enough to see me properly, and the movement feels careful, like he doesn’t want to spook whatever fragile thing just surfaced between us. Up close, the blue of his eyes isn’t flat or polite the way people describe blue eyes, it’s alive. Restless. It looks like it’s moving even when he’s still, like light caught under water. For a split second, there’s heat there, the same charge that’s been humming between us all evening. Then it softens. His gaze flickers over my face, my eyes, my mouth, like he’s checking for fractures, for something he might have caused. And in that shift, I feel disarmed. Like he’s seeing too much and deliberately choosing not to use it against me.
His hand comes up slowly, like he’s giving me time to change my mind, and his thumb brushes my cheek just beneath my eye. The touch is almost reverent.
“Do you want to trade?” he asks quietly.
I look at him, at the intent focus in his eyes, and try not to think about how gentle he’s being, how easily he could be something else and isn’t. I don’t answer. I don’t trust my voice.
So he keeps going, softer now. “A kiss for a hug,” he says. Then, like he’s negotiating with something fragile, “I’ll even take one on the cheek. I’m flexible.”
That earns a faint smile from me. I glance away for a second, just to breathe through the weight of his attention. When I look back at him, my throat tightens. I swallow, lean in, and press a soft kiss to his cheek. It’s brief and restrained. Anything more would crack something open in me I don’t have the strength to manage right now.
I pull back just enough, and he murmurs, almost thoughtfully, “Will you forget me too? Like the last person you hugged?”
I meet his eyes again. “Not if you make it something worth remembering.”
He stalls for a beat, then his hand slides to the back of my neck gently, like he’s asking even as he decides. He guides me in, closing the small, trembling space between us, and suddenly I’m pressed to him. His other arm comes around my back, anchoring me there, and for half a second I just freeze, unsure of myself, unsure of how to exist inside someone else’s arms.
Then I lift mine.
At first it’s cautious, almost polite, my hands settling against him like I might still pull away. But something in me gives quietly, and I tuck my head into the crook of his neck and hold on tighter. The scent of him fills my lungs. My body exhales before my mind can argue.
I wonder, dimly, what he’s thinking. If he can feel how starved I am for this. If part of him is cataloguing it as ‘odd, fragile....too much’. If he’s wondering how long it’s been since I was last held.
But it feels good. Disarmingly so. Being held like this steadies something in me, pulls me out of my head and back into my body. It’s grounding, the way standing barefoot on solid earth must feel after floating too long.
I read once that happiness dies the moment you truly understand your own mortality. I didn’t want to believe that. I fought it, chased joy where I could....during lessons that went well, in books that swallowed me whole, in the quiet ritual of caring for Ember. But even in those moments, the happiness would thin, fade at the edges, like something borrowed I always had to give back.
But not now.
Right now, with my arms around a man I’ve known for less than a week, that absence isn’t here. There’s no echo, no looming subtraction. Just his arms holding me like I belong there, like the present moment is enough.