Rebel (Legend, #4)(57)

I look back at her. “How long have I been out?”

“A day,” she admits.

“And you stayed here?” I ask softly. “The entire time I was out?”

A flash of fear glints in her eyes, then fades. She looks away and out my window. “I was afraid,” she murmurs, “to lose you.”

And again, I find myself thinking about what she’d said during her first night here, when we shared a kiss. When I realized how much her life had moved forward and settled into place.

She looks back at me. “What’s on your mind?” she asks me. “I can always tell by the weight in your eyes.”

“I’m thinking about how I’m the catalyst for chaos in your life,” I answer. “And how sorry I am for it.”

“Don’t be,” she replies. June sighs and looks down. “We’ve always been each other’s catalysts, haven’t we?” she says. “I don’t think we would have met if we weren’t. And sometimes I find myself pulling away because I want to end that cycle for you, as if that might somehow solve it all.”

I think of the way June pulls herself away from our intimate moments. It’s the exact same thing I do. I lean closer to her, letting my hand brush hers. For an instant, I think that she might pull away … but her hand lingers in place, and she stays where she is.

I know that fear she mentioned. That terror of not knowing what might happen to us next, of what could go wrong if we opened our hearts completely to each other. I’d bled the last time I allowed myself to love her, and she had bled the same.

But still, I find myself tightening my grip around her hand, then pulling her closer. She turns to face me in the night.

The fear still grips me, and the words I want to say still stutter to a halt in my throat. But this time, all I can think about is what it was like to live without her for a decade.

When I open my mouth this time, the words finally spill out.

“I don’t deserve having you in my life,” I tell her quietly. “There may always be pain and grief that follows me, even here, in all this Ross City luxury. Maybe that’s the way it goes in life. You don’t deserve to share that pain.” I take a deep breath, trying to quell my fear, the rising tide of all the darkness that still haunts me from the Republic. “But I think you do deserve to know the truth of how I feel. Because even if we can’t be together in the end, I would like you to know.”

June’s eyes are glossy against the blue-gray light filtering in from the windows. “And what is that?” she whispers.

“That I love you,” I whisper. “That I’ve been in love with you for years, even when we were separated. Especially then. I’ve lived with you in my life, and I’ve lived without you. No matter what kind of fear I feel in the possibility of us being together, the fear of being away from you is something I don’t think I can bear.” I look down, shy to meet her gaze now. “I have nightmares of losing you again. All the time.”

There. My heart is ripped open and exposed before her. All the uncertainty that had plagued me before now roars in my mind as I wait for her response.

Maybe this was all a mistake. I shouldn’t have told her this. It’s too soon.

Then June draws nearer. “I never had a chance to tell you, before you and Eden left for Antarctica, that I love you too. So fiercely that it frightens me.” Her voice trembles.

I love you. I love you. I have never heard these words from June before, and now they fill my heart to bursting, making me whole in a way I never knew I could be.

She smiles a little, and now I see that her eyes are moist. “Even if we don’t know where we’ll go in the future, perhaps our lives were always meant to collide again and again. Perhaps we are forever meant to be each other’s catalysts.”

Forever. It’s a word I’ve never dared to use with June. Maybe there is a chance for a forever in our lives.

“I’ve looked over my shoulder for a decade,” I whisper, “wondering what it was that was missing in my life. Turns out, all this time, it was you.”

Then I lean close, and this time, I kiss her.

She nearly collapses into my embrace. Her lips are so soft and familiar against mine, everything that I’ve missed in the years we’ve been apart. Our conversations together may be awkward and polite, and our presence around each other stilted and distant … but this, this feels right in every possible way.

She belongs here, in my arms, and I belong here, giving my whole heart to her.

A deep hunger rises in me. This time, I don’t waste a second. I wrap my arms tightly around her and push her back against the bed. My skin prickles in pleasure wherever she runs her fingers. She runs her hands through my hair and sighs contentedly against me. Her waist, her slender neck, the curve of her hips … I shiver at the warmth of her. Everything about her is like a fever dream. I want to preserve this in time for us. I want a million more of these moments.

She unbuttons my shirt. I pull hers over her head. My fingers run across new scars on her, here and there, a healed scratch, an old raised bruise. She is older, as am I, and we are different now than we were. I love her more for it, wish I had been able to share in all of it with her over the last few years. She kisses my cheeks as I fall into her. Her hands slide down my back. I shudder at her every touch.

The rest of the apartment is silent. Outside, I hear the passing of airplanes. Somewhere in the distance, music is playing. Millions of lights twinkle beyond the windows and against the night, each one a different life, a different moment from ours.