Page 467 of Bad Prince
And then we do.
Slow.
Careful.
Breath by breath.
The years between us seem to dissolve in that quiet room—not erased, but redeemed. All the almosts, all the longing, all the times we might have burned each other down if we’d been given less time to grow into ourselves. It all gathers here instead and turns into something sweeter, steadier, deeper.
Something worth waiting for.
By the time we finally fit around each other the way I think some part of my soul always knew we would, I am shaking again.
So is he.
His forehead presses to mine, both of us breathing like this means everything because it does.
“Baby,” he whispers, like the word itself is a vow.
I wrap my arms around him and hold on.
Not because I’m afraid.
Because I want to remember what it felt like the exact second wanting turned into belonging.
Outside, the sea keeps moving against the cliff.
Inside, the room glows low and warm and golden.
And the rest of it—the heat, the shuddering, the whispered names, the way he moves like reverence and hunger can live in the same body at once—becomes ours.
Private.
Sacred.
A beginning instead of a fall.
Later, much later, when the fire has burned down to embers and the sheets are no longer crisp and my body feels loose and glowing and new in all the best ways, Tristan lies beside me with one hand spread low over my back and his face buried in my hair.
We don’t talk right away.
We don’t need to.
The silence is full of too much tenderness.
Eventually I tilt my face up and find him already looking at me.
Still wrecked.
Still awed.
Still somehow looking at me like I gave him something impossible.
I smile sleepily.
“You’re staring again.”
His thumb strokes once over my shoulder.
