Page 153 of One Last Encore

A sob tore loose from her chest, broken and raw.

"But you were still there," she choked out. "In the faces of strangers on the street. In every song set in 12/8 time. In the silence between breaths, where I begged not to feel you." Her hand trembled, clutching the envelope. "It was always you."

"Ingrid," he rasped, her name shattering on his tongue. Her eyes locked onto his and they were wild and burning with a love that hadn’t dimmed, hadn’t faded. A love that had simply waited.

"I never stopped," she said again, fiercer this time. She sucked in a ragged breath, her voice breaking wide open. "I don't want to stop."

The admission gutted him. He pressed her hand against his chest, right over the frantic pounding of his heart. His heart, her heart, somehow the same thing.

"I don't want to either," he whispered, voice ragged, torn open.

His breath left him in a sharp, uneven rush. This was everything he had dreamed of in the darkest, loneliest hours. Everything he had prayed for but never believed he deserved.

Slowly, he lifted his hand, tucking a stray piece of hair behind her ear. His fingers grazed the soft curve of her neck, delicate and trembling. She shivered beneath his touch, her lips parting, her breath feathering against his skin.

"Are you saying you want this?" His voice was barely a breath. "You want us?"

She pulled the five-dollar bill from the envelope and pressed it hard against his chest, right over the hammering of his heart. Her palm flattened there, trembling, but sure.

"Yes," she said, the word breaking from her lips. "I want all of it. Every second, every version of you. I love you. I always have. I always will."

Her words struck him like lightning, igniting every dark corner he had hidden in. His pulse roared in his ears. His vision blurred, not from pain this time but from the sheer, staggering joy of being seen, chosen, and loved. And now, for the first time, he finally believed it.

A slow smile broke across his face, the kind of joy that lit him up from the inside out. When she smiled back, he caught a flash of her dimples, and it hit him like another strike of lightning. That was the smile he had spent too many nights yearning for, too many dreams trying and failing to recreate.

He didn’t hesitate. His lips crashed against hers, desperate and sure. The kiss of a man who had been starving for her, for them, for far too long. She met him with the same ferocity, her fingers tangling in his hair, yanking him closer, until their bodies fused together, breath to breath, pulse to pulse.

He let himself drown in her. In her taste, her heat, the untamed wildfire that had never once burned out between them.

Every kiss lit him from the inside out, electricity surging through his veins, hotter and sharper than any high he’d ever chased. Her touch was oxygen, and he was breathing for the first time in five damn years.

His hands slid down to her waist, gripping tight, drinking in the way she melted against him, the way her curves still molded perfectly to his body like they had been made for each other.

She whimpered against his mouth, and it broke him open. With a low, guttural groan, he hoisted her into his arms. Her legs locked around his hips without hesitation, her skirt riding up shamelessly high. He carried her up the stairs blindly, driven by pure instinct.

His foot clipped the forgotten coffees on the steps, knocking them over in a splatter of liquid and foam, but he didn’t stop. Nothing mattered. Nothing but her.

She laughed breathlessly against his lips when he fumbled for the door, their bodies pressed so tight there was no room to think, only feel.

He shoved it open so hard it slammed against the wall with a deafening crack, but even that didn’t break them apart.

Her apartment door was hanging ajar, left wide in her mad rush to get to him. She had come after him. That thought alone almost undid him.

He kicked her front door closed with a hard, final thud, sealing them inside their own little universe.

Freddie lifted her head lazily, gave them a disdainful look, and then, deciding her humans were beyond saving, promptly went back to sleep.

"Bed," he rasped, voice rough and wild, like he was seconds from snapping.

Ingrid didn’t answer. She just yanked his shirt over his head in one swift motion, baring him to her gaze. Her hands roamed his chest, tracing the dark lines of ink across tense muscles, featherlight touches that had him gritting his teeth.

"Baby," he groaned, half in warning, half in surrender.

"Door on the left," she whispered against his throat, her nails scraping down his sides just hard enough to make him curse.

He stumbled forward, kicking the door open, crashing into the bedroom with her clinging to him, kissing him like she would never let him go again.

He set her down on the bed, hovering above her for a beat, his chest heaving, drinking her in like she was something sacred.

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