Page 105 of The Final Faceoff
Leif isn’t fleeting. He isn’t a moment that fades or a distraction I can set aside. He’s not something I can leave behind when life twists in ways I don’t expect. He’s constant. The pull I feel even when I’m lost, the North Star guiding me back when I don’t know which way to go. He has always been there—through every silence, every distance, even when I thought I didn’t deserve him. Even when I tried to turn away, he remained. Leif isn’t temporary. He’s the truth I can’t outrun, the light that never disappears, the one thing that has always been mine.
And if I say it—if I let it out into the world—then it’s real. If it’s real then I could lose him and that fear is a vice on my heart. Squeezing it so hard that it can’t beat. I close my eyes, willing myself to breathe, to let this moment pass like all the others before it.
But it doesn’t. It sits in my chest, thick and unrelenting, pressing against the part of me that has always run from things that felt too big to hold.
I open my eyes, gaze drifting to him again.
The way the light from the window softens the edges of his face. The way his lips part just slightly, his breath slow and even. The way his hand rests near his pillow, fingers curled like he’s reaching for something.
I swallow, pulse kicking up.
I shouldn’t.
I shouldn’t.
I—
I move.
Careful. Quiet. Sliding onto the mattress beside him, barely breathing, heart pounding like I’m standing at the edge of something too vast to understand.
He doesn’t wake. Not at first. But then he shifts, his body adjusting like it already knows me, like this isn’t new at all. His arm drapes over my waist, pulling me closer, his warmth settling against my skin like an answer I’ve been too afraid to hear.
I don’t think. I press into him, fingers curling against his chest, my forehead resting just beneath his jaw.
He stirs, breath catching.
“Hails?” His voice is rough, low, wrapped in sleep and something else entirely.
I don’t answer.
I just press closer, my lips grazing his collarbone, my body fitting against his like it was made for this.
A slow inhale, then exhale.
Then, his fingers slide up my spine, his palm settling between my shoulder blades. “Couldn’t sleep?”
I shake my head.
Silence stretches between us, thick enough to pull me under.
“You’ve been looking at me like you have something to say.”
I pull back just enough to meet his gaze, my breath catching at the way he looks at me—like I’m everything. He’s been telling me that for weeks, and somehow today I believe it. Maybe it’s true, maybe I’ve always been everything to him. Maybe he’s always been the same to me but I’ve denying that all along.
So I say it: “I love you.”
His breath hitches. Not because he’s surprised. Not because he wasn’t expecting it. But because I finally said it.
His eyes soften, something shifting between us, something too real, too big to name.
He lifts a hand, fingertips brushing my jaw. Then, voice barely above a whisper he says, “I know, but it’s nice to finally hear it from those pretty lips.”
The low sexy voice shouldn’t make my stomach drop. It shouldn’t make my heart squeeze, shouldn’t make my entire world tilt on its axis.
But it does, because of course he knows. Leif has always known. And instead of asking if I mean it, instead of making me say it again, he just accepts it. Like he’s been waiting for me to catch up. Like he was never going anywhere.
A tear slips down my cheek before I can stop it, but Leif is already there, already catching it with the pad of his thumb, already closing the space between us. I meet him halfway.
