Page 66 of Beautiful Ruins
Comfort and care.
He kissed me again, and this time I felt something move between us.Something deeper than the heat building in my chest.
It wasn’t just physical.It was emotional.In the way he looked at me.In the way his hands held me with steady certainty instead of impatience.
I felt seen.Not examined.Not claimed.Chosen.
He touched me like I was something both precious and untouchable at the same time.And when we finally moved together, it wasn’t frantic or clumsy the way first moments sometimes were.
It was slow.Unhurried.
Every motion deliberate, like we were both learning something new with each breath we shared.
The rhythm we found wasn’t about urgency.It was about connection.About the expected trust that had somehow grown between us without either of us noticing when it started.
Time blurred.
The world beyond that room disappeared entirely.
There were no walls, no house, no complicated lives waiting for us outside that door.
Just warmth.Skin.Breath.
The soft yet terrifying thrill of something unfolding between us that neither of us had planned for.
Something that felt brutally close to first love blooming in the most unlikely place.
When everything finally stilled, I lay there with my head resting against his chest.
His arm came around me almost automatically, pulling me closer until I could hear the steady rhythm of his heartbeat beneath my ear.
It had slowed again.
Calm.Strong.Alive.
My fingers traced absent shapes against his skin while we lay there in the aftermath, the room dim and peaceful in a way that felt almost unreal.
For a long time neither of us spoke.His breathing rose and fell beneath my cheek, and for the first time in what felt like forever, my mind wasn’t racing toward the next disaster waiting to happen.
I simply existed.Right there.With him.
And as I listened to the steady drum of his heart beneath my ear, a welcome realization settled into my chest.
This hadn’t been reckless.It hadn’t been some desperate moment born from fear or loneliness.It had been a choice.A clear one.A conscious step toward something that felt frightening precisely because it mattered.
And for the first time in a very long time, I didn’t feel like I was giving pieces of myself away.I felt like I was finally keeping them.
Right where they belonged.
21
Raze
Izzy’s head rested in the crook of my arm, hair spilled across my chest, her fingers tracing lazy patterns over my skin.Searching, seeking.Content.
The afterglow lingered between us—heat, sweat, breath still syncing.The room was lifeless except for the soft drag of her fingertips along the ink that marked me.
She’d been bold earlier.Now she was curious.Her fingers followed one line across my ribcage, then dipped lower to the raised patch of scar tissue that twisted beneath a tattoo.
