Page 151 of Never After Us
ChapterSixty-Two
Alec
I wasn’t expecting to read ...well, that.
I stare at my mug of tea—yes, tea, because Mara convinced me that drinking it is “how mature adults welcome the day,” right after declaring coffee too aggressive for sunrise energy.
Lina’s letter sits open on the counter beside me, the handwriting soft and familiar in a way that shouldn’t hurt but does.I wasn’t prepared for the weight of her words.For the way she kept trying to take care of everyone, even from a distance.Even when she knew—fuck, did she know?—that she wouldn’t be here much longer.
It feels like a message she meant me to find long before now, but no one noticed.
I read it again, slower this time, searching for anything between the lines.Anything she didn’t say but maybe meant.
“What are you doing?”
Mara’s voice snaps through the quiet, and I flinch hard enough to smack my knee against the cupboard door.“Ow—shit.”
She stands almost in front of me.Hair twisted into a messy knot, sweater soft enough to make a saint want to sin.She looks like warmth, like quiet mornings and comfort—but her expression is pure suspicion.
“We agreed,” she says, stepping closer.“We weren’t going to read any ofherletters.Like never.”
“Your letters,” I correct.“This one is addressed to me.”
She squints.“I assumed we meant all of them.Don’t you loophole me, Alec Hovarth.”
“Well, I thought it might be a shopping list,” I mutter.
She stares at me, deadpan.“Was it?A shopping list.”
I sigh, give up, and hand her the paper.“Fine.She asked me to look after you.”
She hesitates before taking it—like the paper might burn her fingers or dissolve if she breathes too hard.Her eyes skim the words, and the change in her is immediate.Her mouth trembles, soft and uneven, her breath catching in this tiny, fractured way that sounds like something inside her coming undone.
“Oh,” she whispers.
Then again, smaller, “Oh.”
Her shoulders curl inward as tears spill, quick and fragile.She presses her hand to her mouth as though trying to hold herself together, but she’s already slipping through the seams.
I step forward before I even register the movement.
She leans into me like she’s been trying not to for months.Like she’s tired of being the strong one.Like she finally lets herself fall because I’m close enough to catch her.
I wrap my arms around her, pulling her in.Her fingers clutch my shirt like she needs something solid to hold onto.Her forehead presses against my collarbone, warm and damp with tears.
“You are a good man,” she murmurs into my chest, her voice thick and trembling, the words landing in a place I didn’t know I’d been guarding.
I forget how to breathe.
Before I can say anything—before I can sort out the way her words cut and heal in the exact moment—she tilts her head up.
And then she kisses me.
It’s not careful.Nor tentative.
It’s a collision—soft lips, wet lashes, the faint taste of salt and grief, and something she’s been holding back too long.
Her mouth finds mine like she’s reaching for air.Like she needs this more than she needs the ground under her feet.And I feel her breath mix with mine, shaky and warm.My brain sputters out like a dying lightbulb, flickering once before going completely blind to everything but her.
