Page 67 of The Final Faceoff
“Don’t do that, Hailey.” My voice is low, but it still lands between us with the force of a slap. “Don’t tarnish the best kiss of my entire life because you’re scared of what happens next.”
She flinches, just a flicker, but I catch it.
“Leif—”
“No,” I say, voice rougher now. “Don’t pretend like that meant nothing.”
Her lips part, but no words come out.
Because she knows. She fucking knows this was a lot more. This might be the beginning of everything. But my gloom and doom girl thinks it’s the beginning of the end, doesn’t she?
She looks wrecked, like she’s at war with herself. Like she’s already planning to do the thing that will gut us both. And I can’t let her.
“You felt that,” I say, watching the way her lashes flutter. “I know you did.”
She shakes her head, but it’s weak. A feeble attempt at denial. “It doesn’t matter,” she whispers.
I laugh. The sound is cold, humorless. “It doesn’t?”
Her throat works around the answer. “It can’t.”
I drag a hand through my hair, my pulse hammering so hard I feel it in my teeth. “Why not?”
She hesitates, like she doesn’t want to say it. Like saying it will make it real. But then she does.
“Because if I lose you, I lose everything,” she says softly. “You’re the only person I have.”
I knew this is how she’d feel and she’d run away fast and far, and of course I can’t let it happen. Not when it’s not only her I’d lose, but the little one too.
I take a step back, struggling as I think how to make sense for her. For me it’s pretty simple, I fucking love her and living without her has been hard while she’s traveling. Now it’d be fucking impossible. “You think being with me would make you lose me?”
Her shoulders sag. “Leif?—”
“No, I get it.” And, fuck, I do. Too well.
She thinks this is a risk. She thinks I’m a risk.
But what she doesn’t understand—what she’s never understood—is that I’ve never been anything but hers. I’ve been waiting for her since the moment I met her.
I swallow past the ache in my throat, forcing my voice to stay even. “I would never leave you, Hailey.”
She looks away. Doesn’t believe me.
And that? That guts me.
“You’re my best friend,” she says.
“I know,” I say. “You’re my best friend.” My voice dips, weighted with something heavier, something truer. Something that has lived in my bones for as long as I’ve known her.
I could tell her that I love her. That I’m in love with her. That this love hasn’t just lingered—it’s grown, deepened, turned into something so relentless it carves itself into me with every breath I take. That I’ve fallen in love with her in a thousand quiet ways, in the way she scrunches her nose when she’s thinking, in the way she laughs like she’s unafraid to be heard, in the way she leans into me like I’m the place she trusts to hold her up.
“I’ve always told you that you’re my person—mine. You just never wanted to hear it, did you?” My voice is rough, edged with something unshakable. “But it doesn’t make it any less true.”
She sways slightly, like the words hit harder than she expected. “If we do this, if we screw this up?—”
I step closer, cutting her off. “What if we don’t?”
She stares at me, blinking like she’s trying to process what I just said.
