Page 5 of Victorious: Part 2
The anguish in his voice breaks something inside me because I know the feeling. This crushing weight of being the one who left. The one who wasn’t there because the visions that just devastated me are due to that same exact feeling.
I step closer, close enough to rest my palm against his chest, over his heart. “It makes you the brother who chose his family’s future over his own need to fight,” I say fiercely. “It makes you the man who puts duty over personal desire. It makes you someone who understands that sometimes the hardest thing to do is… nothing at all.”
His hand covers mine, pressing it flat against his chest.
“I hate this,” he admits. “I hate not knowing. I hate not beingthere. I hate you seeing me weak.” He scoffs, turning from me, running his fingers through his hair. “I was a Steel Serpent for fuck’s sake! I’m supposed to never show emotion. Never show fear, or doubt, or be vulnerable—”
“I don’t need you to be strong.” I grab his arm, forcing him around to face me. “I don’t need a Steel Serpent, Phoenix. I need someone defiant, and that means embracing every fucking part of you,” I tell him, with gusto. “Good, bad, and vulnerable… I need you to be here. With me. Whatever that looks like. No matter how fucking hard it is.”
We stand in the desert, two broken people clinging to each other while our worlds potentially crumble hundreds of miles away.
And somehow, in that brokenness, something shifts.
The fear is still here. The uncertainty. The guilt.
But underneath it all, there’s something else.
Something that resembles apartnership.
Like we’re not just the protector and protected anymore.
We are two people facing the same nightmare together.
The desert wind stills around us, and I hear nothing but our synchronized breathing and the wild beating of my heart.
The air between us crackles, and my skin prickles with goose bumps, every nerve tuned to him. My chest rises and falls too fast, like my lungs forgot how to breathe without permission.
Butterflies riot in my stomach, but it’s not fear. It’s something softer. Wilder. Something I’m not sure I deserve.
“Clover,” my name is a whisper on his lips, and then he’s leaning down, closing the distance between us with the kind of tenderness that makes my chest ache.
His eyes don’t leave mine. Not once. Like he’s making sure I don’t disappear before he reaches me. Like I’m something breakable and he’s already furious with the world for ever fracturing me.
My breath stutters, my heart lurches, and for the briefest second, I think if he kisses me now, I’ll never recover.
And worse, I won’t want to.
His lips meet mine, warm and weightless at first, and it feels as though I’m coming home after being lost for too long. The kiss is unhurried, deliberate, not the desperate collision I expected, but something deeper. Something that speaks of promises neither of us knows how to keep, and wounds we’ve stopped pretending don’t exist. Something that says even if we burn for it, we’ll rise anyway because some fires are worth burning for.
My hands fist in his shirt, not to pull him closer but to hold onto something steady as heat rolls through me in waves, starting where our lips meet and rippling outward, exploding through me like a wave of exciting energy.
Every nerve sparks, tingling with awareness, with want, with something that feels suspiciously like hope. Phoenix’s other hand finds the small of my back, not demanding, just steadying, and I melt into him.
I don’t just melt, I ignite.
And he doesn’t flinch from it, he fuels it.
He kisses me as if I’m something sacred, like I’m not just a girl on fire, but the reason he’s still burning. His lips move against mine with careful precision, as though he’s trying to pour every unspoken word, every fear, every promise into this single moment. I taste the salt of my tears and the bitter edge of leftover jerky from this morning that feels like a lifetime ago now. But beneath it all, I taste something else.
Something steady.
Him.Phoenix.The man born from fire, who holds me as if I’m the only thing in this broken world worth rising for.
Time doesn’t exist here.
There’s only this.
There’s onlyhim.
