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It makes sense to offer Rayla his bed that night.
She’s raring to go, insistent on getting him and Ez and the cube as far from the mirror as possible, but it’s already late, and the moon’s not quite full, and he just got her back….
…and she really should get some sleep.
Callum tells her so, and doesn’t even feel bad about the rest of the guilt trip that gets her to agree to stay put til morning. It doesn’t take much convincing, honestly…and he can’t help but think about the letter shut away in his desk—how she’d wanted him to make her stay back then too, just beneath the panicked, protective surface.
She fades into moonlight again to sneak past the guards with her little pet hiding in her cloak, and he rushes down the stairs, knowing he won’t beat her there, but scrambling to try anyway.
It’s not until he bursts into his bedroom to find it empty that he realizes—of course she wouldn’t be there.
He puts on a bit of a show on his way to the room they’d once shared, staring at the ground instead of sprinting the way he wants to, sending the usual sulky signal to the guards patrolling this corridor, knowing that neither of them are ready for the whole castle to have an inkling that she’s here yet.
The door creaks open, and he finds her with her eyes fixed on her corner of the room: her blanket still rumpled, the few belongings she’d collected that week in Katolis covered in dust but still in place there on her bedside table…
Everything just the way she’d left it.
“I thought—” Rayla cradles her elbows in her hands, her shadow long and tall in the moonlight through the open curtains, and turns, her profile highlighted in the glow, eyes cutting to the clear desktop and stripped bed by the door. “You don’t sleep here anymore?”
“I—” he starts, swallowing down the lump in his throat. He tries not to let his eyes water, remembering that first sleepless week, newly fifteen and unable to do anything but stare at her empty bed and cry. “I couldn’t anymore. Not without you.”
Anything would be less awkward than the silence that follows, he thinks, as Rayla purses her lips and nods thoughtfully, looking back to her old bed.
“You kept it like this for me?” she finally asks, the corner of her mouth barely twitching upward in something like a smile as she reaches up for the distraction of petting the creature on her shoulder.
“It was your room too,” Callum says quickly, avoiding her eyes, sputtering from the way she still flusters him in spite of everything else that he should be preoccupied with. He corrects himself, forcing focus on the top priority: needing her to know—above all else—that he wants her here...as hard as it is to see her again after so long. “It…is your room, if you want it to be.”
That’s…not exactly what he means, and he knows Rayla knows it too, and it’s another quiet, awkward moment before she answers.
“I’ve always wanted it to be,” she says, her voice quiet and her footsteps closing just a little bit of the space between them. Rayla’s brows knit together across her forehead, her eyes scanning his face in something between worry and confusion. “I’ve…always wanted to be here. You do know that, right?”
“Yeah,” he says, quickly again, all too familiar with the infuriating refrain he’d repeated to himself a million times: she had to leave, she hadn’t wanted to. “Yeah. That was…clear.”
He looks at her feet, and they’re shifting a little, like she wants to move closer still, like his want to do too…
“Callum—”
“Look—” he starts at the same time, eyes meeting hers. “Do you want to come with me instead? You can stay here alone tonight if you want, but—”
She doesn’t hesitate.
“Yes.”
—
It makes sense to stay with him tonight.
Sure, they should get out of there sooner rather than later…but Callum was right. She does need to rest, and with the cube safely in her pack, it hadn’t taken much to get her to agree to sleep here in Katolis.
It’d been just like she’d feared two summers ago, Rayla thinks: all he’d had to do was say the word, and she’d stayed.
And, sure, she could sleep in her old bed, back in the now half-bare room she’d always imagined coming home to…but it’d felt so heartachingly empty with his things cleared out.
The thought of spending the night alone in the castle—with Callum just a corridor or two away, so close and yet so far after so long—had been just about to rip open every old, aching wound.
But then he’d offered her his bed, and well…
Here she is, dumping her boots on the ground beside it.
Stella hops down off her shoulder, and she finds Callum’s wings dispelled when she turns. The window they’d come in through from across the courtyard is already closed, too, and he’s already arranging blankets over the cushioned armchair in the other corner of the room, and—
She hadn’t really realized what exactly she’d been expecting, and it was probably ridiculous for her to have hoped that the offer of his bed came with him in it too, but…
“We can share this one, you know,” she ventures, daring even a smile, her weight dipping into the edge of his mattress, patting the blanket beneath her.
Callum looks up, already flushed, and her pounding heart undeniably skips a beat, seeing the way that he rubs the back of his neck and looks at the ceiling while he stalls, picking his words.
“That wouldn’t be…weird?” he says at last, shifting eyes barely meeting hers before he goes on without an answer, nodding at Stella. “You and, um—”
“Stella.”
“Stella,” he nods. “You don’t want some, uh…space?”
He’s only almost too sweet to scoff at, she thinks, unable to help but snicker a little at this familiar song-and-dance of slightly-more-considerate-than-is-convenient Callum. She’s the one who offered, isn’t she? “I’ve had two years of space, Callum.”
“Right,” he agrees, and she’s glad it’s a smile that flickers on his lips. He’s still all the way across the room, though, and still hemming and hawing or what else to say, and it’s almost like…he’s uncomfortable.
The warm blush drains away to a self-conscious shiver.
Of course he is.
“Unless you want space?” she tacks on quickly, reminded that the whole thought she’d just rushed into had been ridiculous in the first place. Rayla explains herself, feeling fifteen and foolish all over again. “I thought…well, you asked me to come with you, so I thought—”
Callum suddenly at her side, holding her hand, is answer enough.
—
Bedtime is pretty awkward.
…but it’s also a dream come true.
For the first time in two years, she doesn’t have to imagine the smell of Callum’s soap on the sheets, or the sweet little snores she’s already decided to stay awake to hear again, or the way his cheek smooshes so cutely against the pillow. He’s really there, and right there next to her, and—even better—he wants her there too…which Rayla had imagined, but hadn’t dared to hope for, with two years and two broken hearts between them.
It’s still awkward, though, and it’s not because they haven’t done this before. There’d been plenty of snuggling up together before bedtime in one of their Opeli-mandated twin beds, and a fair amount of sneaking across the room late at night too…but this feels different.
Their giggling is stiff now, rather than giddy, and it feels like such a big deal to be so close when it’d felt so normal back then.
Callum lifts the covers for her…but doesn’t smooth them down over her shoulder the way he used to.
Rayla remembers how to arrange the pillow so that looking over at him was also the most comfortable way to sleep…but then she’s staring, and it feels like too much.
All she wants to do is scoot closer and hold him and let him snore in her ear and drool on her shoulder…but the bed’s so much bigger and there’s so much space between them.
Even Callum slipping into the washroom had felt so formal and so pointed earlier, like a silently set boundary…which it’d never felt like before. He’d always given her the room like that before bed, rapping on the door and listening for her before letting himself back in…but the whole process had felt so tense tonight. She’d long been done putting most of her layers in a pile for Stella to sleep in by the time she heard his knuckles on the door, quick and loud and nothing at all like the cheery little rhythms he used to knock, flirting with her from the other room about missing her after a grand total of two minutes apart…
She doesn’t expect that level of the lovesick silliness they’d had back then, of course, nor does she expect jokes about missing each other anytime soon…but there’s just silence where there would’ve been a kiss goodnight before, and—
They have to start somewhere.
She braces for the brunt of the frustration she’d seen a glimpse of back upstairs…for all the big feelings she was to blame for. “So, I…I owe you an apology.”
“More than an apology, I think,” Callum snorts.
He’s…kidding, and she’s confused because he’s right—an apology doesn’t even begin to cover it—but he explains before she can grovel the way she’s prepared to.
“Three Katolis birthday songs, three Moonshadow Birthday Dances, at least three birthday kisses, too, I think, and—”
There’s not even time to be relieved before she finds herself scrambling near enough to press her lips to his, and kissing him is just so exactly like she remembers that she has to blink down hard to keep from weeping.
“Oh,” he says when she’s done, parted lips slipping instantly into the widest smile she’s seen all night.
That smile—that dopey, adorable smile—stirs up snickering laughter between them, pushing the notion of tears firmly aside, and she grins back, and…
It doesn’t feel so different anymore.
“Sorry, did you want those in order or something?” she smirks, taking in the pink on his cheeks and the bright light in his eyes and the rush of his hand on hers.
“No, no,” Callum’s palm covers her fingertips on his shoulder, assuring her by squeezing them tight. “I mean, I just wasn’t expecting—”
Rayla revels in the parted softness of his lips now that he expects to be kissed, lingering long enough for him to chuckle out a tickly breath against her nose.
“—that,” he sighs out at a whisper, and she’s spellbound—the hazed over green eyes, and the essence of their mingled breath on her lips, the tingling feeling running through her from horn to heel—
“Can—can the rest wait?” she asks, barely able to drag her thoughts—or her eyes—from his lips.
“Yes.”
…and it’s a dream come true.
—
Callum isn’t exactly sure how they’d gotten here.
One minute they’d been stiff and shy, awkwardly pretending like settling side-by-side to sleep somehow still felt normal…and the next they’d been locked together like they’d never been apart at all, lips and limbs so suddenly and so desperately intertwined. At some point he’d lost his shirt, and he’d helped her get rid of most of her clothes too. She’s kissing his neck now and straddling his hips, and—
All he knows is that her new underclothes are—apparently—purple, and her hands are really warm, and her lips are so soft, and—
It feels so right to want her like this—so bad, it hurts—and by the looks of it, she wants him too.
She’s flushed from her breast bindings to the tips of her ears, and when she stops kissing him, it’s only to grind her hips down against his. She whimpers a little when she does, and it’s so unlike anything he’s ever heard before that he doesn’t even know to stop the way his body bucks upward under her. His head rushes, knowing that he’s caused the next little groan she gives and he wants to hold her hips still over him and do it again, but—
“What’s wrong?” Rayla whispers before he’s even realized that he’s paused, her breath warm against his jaw.
“I didn’t expect this either,” Callum says, suddenly and nonsensically so sure that he’s done something wrong by letting months and months of fantasizing escalate all of this so quickly. He’s suddenly so aware of every connection—her naked waist under his palms and her fingertips on his chest, her weight over the ache at his groin… “Just—just so you know.”
She sits upright, stalling the reckless pace they’d set but still straddling him, and his hips almost betray him again.
“Do you want this, though?” she asks with a tilt of her head.
The answer’s so obvious, he thinks, that he almost just laughs and wiggles beneath her, sure that she’ll get the message, but she’s tucking away a strand of hair that’s fallen from her bun, and just barely covering her stomach with the other forearm, and her eyes are wide and unsure like they hadn’t been before…and he knows the question has faded that daring confidence of hers enough that she needs the reassurance instead.
“So much,” he says, reaching to squeeze her knee and watching how her whole face lights up anew. Rayla grins and bites her lip, her eyes sparkling, and he’s about to let his hand find its way up to her hip, but—
“I do owe you,” she says with a coy, flirty little shrug, and he does know that she’s kidding…but he stops again all the same.
He’s slow and clear and still squeezing her knee tight: “You don’t owe me this.”
“I know,” she says quickly, her cheeks an even brighter red, realizing, it seemed, that this was too much to owe, even in jest. “I know. I want this too, Callum.” Her fingers drift down his stomach, to the drawstring on his pajamas…and he holds the swell of her hip. “I want you. That’s…all I’ve ever wanted.”
“I know,” he says—and he does know that—watching the way his hand at the small of her back makes her breath catch, just a little. Her fingers answer his touch by playing gently at the edge of his waistband, and he can barely believe that this is real—that Rayla’s really here, in his bed, half naked and wholly willing—and he knows she’s going to pull the knot apart any second now. It’ll be all frenzy and haste as soon as she does…but he hasn’t said it yet, and, really, she should know before they do this. “Hey…I love you.”
She holds his gaze, deftly undoing the bindings covering her chest, and he copies her when both her hands graze each bare breast. “Still?”
He nods, his touch feather light down her front until his fingertips finally hook into the fabric at her hips, finding even more gloriously bare skin beneath. “Still.”
“I love you too,” she shudders as her hips roll again, eyes fluttering…but she blinks away the clear pleasure one more time, leaving just desperate wanting all over her face, and Callum throbs painful under her, more ready than she could know to give her all she’s asking for. “Now, can I please show you so? I just…want to feel good with you.”
“Show me,” Callum nods, leaning on his elbow, pushing up to meet her lips to answer.
Her hands scramble at last for the loose knot at the front of his pants, and as soon as it’s undone, it’s just like he’d thought—everything’s all a blur again.
His pants are barely off before she’s naked too, and there’s no nerves or hesitation before she touches him. She hums contentedly, kissing him the whole time while her hips rock unevenly against his hand and her fist pumps steadily around him. It’s safe—he checks—to be inside of her, and so before long, she’s guiding him to thrust into her. Her back arches, and she’s whimpering in his arms, and it’s all he can do to be still until the slow, downward strokes of her sex around him have turned the whimpers to moans. All it takes is Rayla sighing his name, though, and he can’t help but spill, his hips bucking upward into the tight heat of her body…
…and by the end of it, Callum isn’t exactly sure how they’d gotten here—her body tucked against his from head to toe, her knee bent across her lap, neither of them caring how sweaty and breathless and messy they’d made each other—
But it feels right.
—
Rayla watches Callum as he comes-to, and he’s happier than she’s ever seen him before, grinning and giggling and looking at her like she’s hung the moon itself.
She can’t help herself but kiss his flushed face, amused at how he’s still gasping long after she’s caught her breath.
“Surprised you don’t have a spell for that, mage,” Rayla teases, tapping his chest in time with his pounding heartbeat, and he laughs just a little louder.
“It’s High Mage now, actually,” he says with a flourish around the title, and the face he makes is just as silly as he sounds.
“Hmm…High Mage Callum, huh?” She nuzzles against a familiar stark-white rune on his arm, echoing the same dramatic effect, then rearranges to reach for the less familiar mess of brown across his brow. “And how’s that, Your Highness?”
Her fingers run gently from the smoothness of his scalp to the ends of the—apparently—perpetually wind-blown look, and Callum leans into her touch, nudging her to repeat it.
“Good—stressful sometimes—but good. I basically get to just learn magic all day…and help Ez, of course.” The heavy, slack weight over her waist is gone for a moment while he shrugs, but his arm falls back to her side, his fingertips trailing behind, and—
She shudders, satisfied in all ways but one, still.
“Got some new spells that’ll really blow your socks off,” Callum continues with a proud little glint in his eyes that tightens the tension in her belly.
“Mmm, think you’ve already done that.” She stops stroking his hair to gesture to all the bare skin pressed against his, and he grins, then pokes her at the waist and grips there tight, and—
Being close like that should be enough, she tells herself. She’s been gone for two years, and he’s done nothing but love her despite that fact, and…she can’t very well ask for things from him, she thinks, pressing her legs tight together in search of relief.
The pink had started to fade from his cheeks, but it flamed anew. “That felt…good?”
She chews on her lip a moment. “Asking or telling?”
“Both,” he says, looking so earnest and so sweet, his thumb stroking the hollow of her hip.
Rayla decides on nodding—it’s true, anyway. “Good.”
“Good?” He squints, and…of course he would see right through her. “Or good good?”
She can’t admit it and look at him, but—
“Um…good.”
She hasn’t even looked back again before his fingers wander, and she’s already so on edge that the way she sighs is really unconvincing, she realizes, but—
“Oh, Callum, you don’t have to—”
“Shh, I’ve got you,” he breathes at her neck and she can’t stop the little satisfied grunt she makes in response. “You said you wanted to feel good with me, right?”
“Uh-huh,” she nods, body instantly twitching as he finds his way to where his fingers had too briefly been before.
Everything’s too good—he’s so warm, and his lips are in all the right places on her neck, and he smells like summer and soap and sweat, and he’s figured out so quickly how to please her—and then he asks: “Am I doing this right?”
The answer is yes, but she begs a faster pace, her elbow hooked around his neck, helping him to a rhythm with her body rocking against him. It doesn’t last, though; it’s just a moment, really, before she’s trembling with release and gasping in ragged gulps of air…and so very wonderstruck that she can’t even speak.
He watches her, this time, as she comes-to, and—
She’s happier than she’s ever been before.
—
Sleep had been the excuse he’d given to make her stay…but the truth is that they get very little that night.
It’s got to be two in the morning, Callum thinks, by the time they split his pajamas between the two of them and start talking about going to bed.
Every time they’re about to blow the candles out, though, there’s simply too much else the other wants to say first. There’s just so much lost time to make up for—months and months of ups and downs, tears they hadn’t been there to wipe away, collected dumb jokes that keep popping up at the least appropriate moments—and…it’s pointless, really, trying to go to sleep.
The last attempt had ended in Rayla scurrying out of bed, smirking about giving him the rest of what he was owed…and Callum certainly wasn’t about to stop her. He’d quickly gathered that all her twirling and skipping around—bare-legged and grinning and gorgeous—was clearly the long-awaited Moonshadow Birthday Dance…but it took Rayla frowning at him after the first go-round to realize that he was supposed to be learning it too, not just watching her spin around his room.
She’d made sure he was focused the next time, eyes flashing at him over her shoulder on every turn, tsking every time she caught his eyes on the curve of her rear peeking out from the hem of his nightshirt. Really he was no better off, he thought, after the second demonstration, but she’d pulled him up anyway and he’d stumbled along.
Maybe it’d been on purpose, though, when he’d spun them both a little too close to the mattress, and maybe he’d meant to pull her down with him.
She doesn’t seem to mind, though, he thinks, feeling Rayla’s laughter against his chest, rumbling even stronger the tighter he squeezes her.
The giggling subsides soon—too soon, truly, for how much of that they’d missed out on, too—and he loosens his embrace enough for her to turn and look at him.
His heart sinks.
She looks so upset—so guilty—for someone who's just been laughing so hard—
“You haven’t even yelled at me,” she whispers.
—like she thinks he will yell simply because she’s reminded him.
And maybe he will at some point, but—
She’s already suffering—it’s plain to see—with her eyes shining with unshed tears, her lip trembling as she holds her elbows instead of him…
Not now. Not with her looking like that.
“Do I need to?”
“Aren’t you upset with me?” she questions, a teardrop falling on the bed before he can catch it.
He’s gentle: the truth doesn’t have to be harsh.
“You knew that before you even left—that I’d be hurt and angry.” Callum quotes her letter, a hand on her cheek just before her face crumples to tears. “More than anything, though, I was worried about you, Rayla. I love you, and I had no idea if you were okay. I just—”
At first, he thinks she’s just mirroring him, but no, he’s weeping too, and she’s wiping wetness from his eyes. It feels so strangely good, though, to cry in front of her, to touch her matching tears, to know he can just…pull her close.
“I’m—I’m so relieved, Rayla,” he explains, letting the streaming tears be to hug her instead, his voice muffled against her shoulder. “Maybe I’ll be mad tomorrow, or next week, or a month from now, but…I just missed you. I missed you so much.”
Rayla returns the embrace, her hold strong and fierce and brief—
“I missed you too, Callum.”
—before she crushes her lips to his again. The kiss tastes like tears—his or hers, he’s unsure—but when she’s through, she’s smiling weakly and trying—at least—to dry her eyes.
“I still owe you some Katolis birthday songs, I know,” she says, sputtering out something between a sob and a snicker, and he can’t help but smile too. “But…what else can I do to make it up to you? I’ll do anything, I swear.”
“Mmmm…anything?” Callum asks, eyebrows bolting skyward, hoping to the heavens that teasing her will help and not hurt…and that his idea will cheer her up.
The teasing does help, he thinks. He believes the way her eyes sparkle and the way her smile gets all bashful and sweet, instead of forced and fragile. She reaches for his waistband again, and leans up, starry-eyed, to whisper in his ear—
“I have some…ideas,” Rayla says, her fingertips wandering…but he gently takes her hand instead.
That…really shouldn’t be an apology, he still thinks.
Plus, his idea is better.
“Nope,” he insists, crossing his arms with affected severity. “Jerkface. Dance.”
“Oh.” She deflates, slumping over with an overexaggerated huff, but lets him hold her hand captive, despite the half-hearted, dramatic way she wiggles away. “Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes,” he smirks at her, using the hand held in his to guide her up to her feet.
Sighing and rolling her eyes, she accepts her fate, standing in front of him…but then she’s tugging on him and he’s on his feet too—
“Come on, then,” she says, grinning back at his confusion. “Teach me, dummy.”
—
It’s so late, and Rayla doesn’t want to sleep…but it’s getting hard to fight it.
It hadn’t been hard at all until this last time they’d found themselves horizontal. They’d been so caught up in the rush of sheer delight at being together again—all awkward nerves and newfound intimacy and helpless giggling—that sleep hadn’t even been a possibility before now.
But the rush is softening and it’s getting more and more difficult to stay awake, especially with Callum’s fingers in her hair, buried in the strands of her braid, tracing along the base of her horns, running across her scalp…
It’s all she can do, really, to keep her eyes open despite how heavy with sleep she feels, but she can’t bear to not look at him after so long apart. He’s just so handsome, with those bright green eyes staring back at her, the tufts of messy brown smooshed against the pillow, the way that the angles of his face have matured to sharper edges…
She loves him so much, and…she knows he loves her too, but believing it is another matter.
It feels just too much like a dream, and falling asleep will mean it’s over.
They’ll wake up, and then…who knows if they’ll have anything this perfect again? It won’t just be them anymore, and then they’ll have to leave, and who knows if he’ll even want this again?
He speaks and she watches how his lips shape the words, how his eyes flicker across her face, how his fingers flex when he reaches for her. “Your hair got messed up.”
“I wonder why that could be,” Rayla breathes, managing a lazy, sleepy chuckle at all of the fooling around that’d managed to loosen the stray strands he was tucking away, his fingertip tickling against the tip of her ear.
“I can think of a few reasons,” Callum says, smirking and snickering, before threading his arms around her tired body. “Here, sit up.”
She yawns but humors him, sitting up slumped while he scoots close, settling with his shins on either side of her hips. “If you take it down, you have to put it back up too, you know,” she says as he digs in her bun for the end of her braid.
“Okay,” he agrees. Lips just under her ear, Callum unwraps the long plait holding her hair up and off her neck, and her hair falls. He buries his nose at her temple, his arm looped around her middle…and being held like that after so long alone is just so nice.
He’s so nice.
Too nice.
“I’ll fix it in the morning,” he says.
She tells herself that she’s just tired—he’s given her no reason to dread everything else that the morning will bring quite as much as she is—but she’s glad he can’t see how her eyes water.
“Will we still be like this in the morning?” she asks, swallowing hard at the prospect of losing this, their little pocket of perfect bliss.
Slowly, he starts pulling apart her braid, his hands cautious and thoughtful. “What do you mean?”
“Happy.”
He knows she’s crying now, she’s sure, from how he pauses to touch her back.
“It’s just that you haven’t forgiven me yet—” Her voice cracks and shakes: somehow the words feel so much more vulnerable than anything else has. “—and I’m afraid you’re going to decide that you shouldn’t forgive me, and then you’re going to regret all of this, and—”
“Hey, hey, hey.” Callum abandons her hair to squeeze tight around her waist again instead, his lips landing on her cheek. “I am not going to regret this.”
“You don’t forgive me, though,” she adds, vision flooding with tears, her chest heaving out a ragged, single sob that spirals to a second, and she feels so pathetic that she can’t catch her breath. “You shouldn’t forgive me,”
“I…I will forgive you, Rayla.” The words come slowly, and his hands are just as unrushed as he weaves one big braid, juggling the three sections of hair with gentle tension. “I just…I need time, and we need to talk—actually talk,” he explains, and she feels her cheeks flame.
She knows this—she does—that that’s what he needs. Time and talking had been what she’d always thought she’d come home to; she hadn’t even dared to imagine sex and silliness like they’d just had. Of course it feels too good to be true.
“But I can still love you even if I can’t forgive you yet.” Callum goes on, saying what he’s already shown, what she’s already seen...what she already knows, even if it’s hard to believe. “I do. I love you, and…you did this because you love me.”
His hands still at the bottom of the braid he’s made and he draws his own shaky breath as he knots the end in place—
“I swear, Rayla, I know that your heart was in the right place.”
—and she’s sure he’s crying now too.
“But that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt me.”
She’s right, she finds, when she turns to him. He’s done with her hair and his face is wet with tears, and even if he does forgive her…how can she forgive herself?
He’s given her everything, and…all she’s ever done is hurt him.
“I’m sorry, Callum, so, so sorry.” He lets her knock him backward, and she’s not sure whose embrace is tighter, but he cradles her head to his chest, and even his hugs are better than hers, she thinks, crying again at how he’s the one comforting her. “I love you so, so much.”
“I loved you then, and I’ve loved you all along,” Callum whispers, gathering her up close, breathing the words against her hair. “I love you now, and I’ll love you tomorrow. There’s nothing you could do, Rayla, that would make me stop. I promise.”
She cries until she can’t anymore, and even when she’s done—even when she’s given in and drifted off to sleep—he’s still going on, his voice echoing the same refrain in her dreams.
He loves her.
She knows it, even if she can’t quite believe it.