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Life stitched us together before tearing us apart. Although the fabric that bound us was torn, the edges frayed, the threads were still there. Now rough and tattered, threadbare in the aftermath of the life we lived, and the love that ribboned itself between us, those threads still seek the knots that will make us whole again.

That’s how we come back together. Rough and torn and twisted up in knots.

Her hands palm my neck, fingertips sinking into my hair, nails biting into my scalp as she holds me to her. I can feel the ravaged thrashing of her heart against my chest. My own hand lifts to sink into the thick waves of her hair, cradling her head.

And that is how we stay for a long while. Too long to know, for sure.

I just know that I could stay like this for the rest of eternity, holding her to me. Grounding her while she lets go of the pain she forces herself to shoulder in front of everyone else.

Finally, she stops sobbing. Her hands loosen around my neck to fall to my shoulders, but she doesn’t push me away.

I bow my head and bend my knees just enough to press my forehead to hers. Her scent, like sweet peaches and something warmer, spicier, invades my lungs with every breath I breathe, until I think I’ll taste her on every exhale I dare to release for the rest of my days.

“You’re here.”

My voice sounds thick with emotion and hunger. “I am.”

“Thank you.”

Her breath is warm against my lips. My hands move to hold the side of her head, my thumbs under her jaw. She trembles in my hold, and there’s a new hitch to the breath she breathes. A rattle of something that forgets grief.

“Holt…”

I can’t help myself. The emotions of the day. The feel of her body against mine. The teasing taste of her warm breath…

The way she says my name.

It’s all too much.

I’ve tried to be strong. But I am only a man.

I take her mouth with my own. It’s not gentle and sweet, like I hoped it would be when I first kissed her again. It’s raw and ravenous. I should have expected this after the years that stand between us. The hunger. The need.

She doesn’t deny me. There is no hesitation at all from her as she parts her lips under mine, allowing me to enter. I don’t hesitate to claim all that I’ve ached to claim since the last time I kissed her all those years ago. The taste of her is as familiar as it is new. The hint of sweet peach now has undertones of spice that come only with time.

I kiss her harder and deeper, seeking more. Everything.

She swims in my mind.

I want more.

Her palms flatten against my chest, and she moans a sound I know I’ll never forget as long as I live as she pushes me gently away.

“We—oh, my goodness—Holt. I—I—I—” She’s shaking her head a little frantically now, still pressed between me and the wall.

Grieving, overwhelmed, freaked out—just kissed—she’s so fucking beautiful. I could look at her endlessly and still be twisted up in wonder.

Her lips are red and swollen. I wasn’t kidding when I said the kiss was raw and ravaging and filled with an obviously brutal hunger. I poured more than the last few months into that kiss.

She blinks wet eyes burning with hesitation and something deeper and darker up at me. Her bottom lip quivers. “I don’t know⁠—”

“We kissed, Faye,” I tell her pointedly. “We’ll kiss again, too.”

Her eyes snap wide with shock.

I grin. That’s right, baby. This wasn’t a one-time thing. I wasn’t just caught up in the moment.

Her eyes tear from mine for the first time. They slide to the side, and she pulls the corner of her lip into her mouth, nibbling it in thought. And now she’s cute.