Chapter 58
She was crying.
‘You’re alive,’ she repeated, her voice hoarse and broken.
Lucas nodded.
‘You came back.’
Her bottom lip was trembling and he wanted to reach out and still it. He wanted to. But he couldn’t. Instead he just nodded. She looked like she might collapse. She was staring at him in amazement but now he saw confusion at his silence. He didn’t know what to do. Her fingers just then, tracing his lips, had lit a fragile hope in him that she did still feel something for him.
But he couldn’t forget the image of her lying on top of Cyrus.
‘I came back,’ he whispered softly, raising his hand and wiping away the tears that were sliding down her cheek without stopping to think about what he was doing.
She caught his hand in her own and brought it against her lips, kissing the palm so softly that he took a sharp breath in, as the ache in his chest sprang upwards and released. She looked up at him then and he felt the electricity coursing in currents between them.
He closed the distance, taking her face in his hands, and kissed her as he’d imagined kissing her every second of every day he’d been apart from her. He kissed her as if he’d once been a dead man and she had brought him back to life. He kissed her until he felt her legs give way and he had to pull her even tighter against his chest, until the air around them was sparking with static. And he kept kissing her even when Flic coughed loudly beside him.
And when he finally opened his eyes and looked into the deep, blazing blue of Evie’s he smiled, already knowing the answer, the truth of what she was feeling, of what he still was to her, seeing it reflected in her eyes.
There was no loss. There was only belonging.