‘So I know that the last time we spoke, you told me to leave.’
I wince. I mean, she’s not wrong, but it stings to hear it like that, from her point of view.
‘And Ididleave,’ she continues. ‘You wanted me to go back to my life and try to find what I was looking for. But when I went back to my life, it felt… different. And it took me a little while to realise that it was becauseIwas different.’
She smiles, and it’s a tiny movement– quiet and tentative. ‘I’ve spent my entire life trying to make other people happy, often at my own expense, and I’m not doing it anymore. I need to do what feels right to me.’
Her smile broadens, chest puffing out with pride, and her voice when she speaks is a little bolder. ‘If you told me to go because you don’t want me here, I’ll leave. But if it was because you were trying to do what you think is best for me, then no. I’ll decide that.’
Pride simmers somewhere in my chest. OfcourseI was trying to do what I thought was best, but most of all I couldn’t bear the idea of her settling for me. I feel like Ideserve this version of Lucy the least, but she’s right. I definitely want her here. It was stupid of me to pretend that I didn’t.
She reaches for my hand, warm fingers closing around mine. ‘I told you that I want a family, and that was the truth, but I don’t think there’s any set way to have that. I mean, you can start out with these grand ideas of how your family is going to be, but life doesn’t usually go to plan. People die, they abandon you with your grandparents, they beg their undead celebrity friends to turn them.’ She shoots me a knowing look after the last comment, and it makes a surprised laugh burst out of me.
‘Peggy said it best,’ she says, her lips curving into a smile. ‘She said that sometimes your closest bond is with people who aren’t really family at all– that it means more if they’re here because they choose to be.’
That hits me right in the chest. She’s right, of course. I mean, when I think of all the people in my life that I consider family, I’m mostly not related to them– or I’m only possibly related to them– and that’s never bothered me before. I don’t know why I thought it would be different for her.
She’s here because she’s choosing to be, and it means everything.
‘At the end of the day,’ she says, those clear blue eyes holding mine like a promise, ‘all any of us are looking for is somewhere to belong, and I found that here. With you.’
I gather her up into my arms without a moment’s hesitation, muttering softly into her hair, into that crease at the base of her neck. It’s only been days, but it feels like years since I’ve held her like this, and I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to let her go.
I note the moment she melts into me, cataloguing it in my brain so I can replay it over and over.
‘I don’t need you to promise me forever, just because you’ve got it,’ she mutters, close to my ear. ‘All I want is right now. We can work on the rest.’
I don’t know much, but I know one thing: right now is not nearly enough. I back up a bit so that I can study her. I want to take my time with this– to commit every detail of her to memory.
My fingers skate across the skin of her cheek, soft and cool from the breeze. ‘I loved your speech.’
She beams in response. ‘Thank you.’
‘It wasn’t necessary, though,’ I say, reaching my free hand to flip my hair out of my face. ‘You already had me.’ I chuckle with the truth of it. ‘You’ve had me the whole time. You could have just marched over here and told me to stop being an idiot and kiss you, and I would have been all in.’
Her smile twists a little to the side, teeth nipping at her lower lip. ‘Really?’
‘Yeah.’
Honestly, I was all in the very second I realised she’d come back for me. That she’d chosen me.
I feel her laugh as a warm breath against me. ‘Bram?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Stop being an idiot and kiss me.’
She does not need to ask me twice.
I use the hand on her cheek as leverage as I pull her face to mine. I kiss her softly at first, slow strokes of my lips againsthers, which feel like an apology and a vow all at once, before they gradually become needier– maybe a little frantic.
It’s probably deeply inappropriate to kiss like this in a graveyard, but I don’t let that hold me back. Because I’ve never felt more alive than I do with Lucy’s tongue in my mouth, her hands tugging at my jacket, my heart in her hands.
Not to mention that it’s goth as fuck.
May the people around us rest in peace.
‘I hoped you’d come back,’ I mutter, between kisses, pulling away a little to nod at the church behind us. ‘I’d have prayed for it, but I didn’t want to burst into flames.’