Page 62 of Make Out With A Merman

Callie just grabs my hand, gives me that look,don’t fight me on thisand leads the way.

She doesn’t say a word as she pulls off my soaked shirt and tosses me a dry one from the footlocker. Doesn’t flinch at the new bruises blooming along my ribs. Doesn’t comment on the shaking in my fingers when I sit on the edge of the bed.

She just moves around the space like she belongs there.

And gods help me, I want her to.

She tosses me a blanket. Then wraps one around her shoulders, sits beside me on the bed, and exhales.

“That was the worst ten minutes of my life,” she says finally.

I lean back on my elbows. “You handled it.”

She looks at me. “That doesn’t mean it didn’t wreck me.”

Her voice breaks on the wordwreck,and something cracks open in me right alongside it.

I reach for her hand, thread my fingers through hers.

“You’re allowed to be scared,” I say.

She leans her head against my shoulder. “I don’t want to lose you, Ryder.”

“You won’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I don’t,” I admit. “But I know this, if I do go under… you’re the last thing I want to remember.”

She turns her face to look at me.

And I see it in her eyes, everything she’s not saying.

So I say it first.

“I love you.”

She doesn’t gasp. Doesn’t freeze. Justmelts.

Slow and sure, like every wall she’s ever built just forgot how to stand.

“I love you, too,” she whispers. “You absolute disaster of a man.”

I smirk. “Takes one to know one.”

She kisses me.

Not rough. Not rushed.

Just real.

The kind of kiss you give someone when you’re anchoring them to the here and now.

When you’re choosing them, even with everything trying to tear the world apart.

She crawls into the bed beside me, curls against my chest, and lets out the softest sigh I’ve ever heard.

“Just stay here,” she mumbles.

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