Maybe it’s selfish to be here with Aisling like this, to want her, to feel something other than grief when I’d convinced myself grief was all I deserved. But the truth presses in, impossible to ignore.
I’ve wanted Aisling for as long as I can remember.
I’ve wanted her all along.
I just buried it, sealed it away the day I walked out of that club and left her behind, convinced I was doing the right thing. But I never really got over her.
My hand slides along her side, feeling the familiar curve of her waist, the way her body arches instinctively into my touch.
She makes a soft sound, something between a sigh and a laugh, and it hits me straight in the chest.
God, she’s intoxicating.
She always was.
Her fingers trace my back, nails dragging lightly, and the sensation pulls a memory loose.
Her straddling my lap years ago, eyes bright with challenge and heat, daring me to keep up.
The way she laughed when I matched her pace instead of controlling it.
Playful. Fierce. Alive.
She’s still all of that—and so much more.
I kiss her slowly, deliberately, tasting her like I’m trying to convince myself she’s real.
That this moment isn’t just a trick of nostalgia and longing.
Her mouth opens under mine, welcoming, familiar, and the way she melts into me tells me she feels it too.
I don’t know what this means. I don’t know where it ends. But I know burying what I feel for her didn’t kill it.
And now that it’s awake again, alive and burning and real in my arms, I don’t think I’m strong enough to put it back in the ground.
Maybe that makes me selfish.
Or maybe it just makes me human.
31
AISLING
A week feels like a lifetime when you’ve been living half a life for five years.
Riley has been here seven days, and my heart has never been fuller.
Not in the loud, bursting way that feels unsustainable, but in a deep, steady way, like something finally settled into the place it always belonged.
She wakes up every morning tangled in unfamiliar sheets and smiles anyway.
She follows Raf through the house like he’s a magnet.
She insists on sitting beside him at breakfast, legs swinging, asking him questions that range from “Why do you drink coffee if it’s bitter?” to “If you were an animal, would you be a wolf or a lion?”
He answers every single one. Sometimes seriously. Sometimes playfully. Always patiently.
Watching them together feels like standing too close to a fire—warm and dangerous all at once.