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My mom. The only real mother he ever had. And she’s gone and he came here and he is crying and I feel something so big and so tender I don’t have a word for it.

We look at each other.

Both completely undone.

I suddenly notice how genuinely incredible Cassian looks.

Broader. Jaw sharper. Slightly older.

And then I laugh.

I don’t know why. The pills probably. Or the absurdity of everything. Or the way he looks — this person I’ve loved my entire life, red-eyed and real and right here — and I laugh once, short and involuntary, and he blinks.

One eyebrow up.

“Sorry,” I manage. “I’m—” I wave vaguely at the room. At myself. “The pills.”

As if that explains anything.

I forgot he stopped existing here after the hospital and the pills.

He stares at me.

And then he kisses me.

I don’t see it coming.

I don’t have time to decide what to do with it.

I just sit there for two full seconds while Cassian Vale kisses me on the worst night of my life and then every single rational thought I have ever had leaves my body and I kiss him back.

With everything.

Every broken piece of me.

Two years of grey and empty and pill bottles and waiting and the window I kept open like an idiot.

Two years of almost.

All of it.

• • •

He makes a sound against my mouth. Surprised. Like he wasn’t prepared for all of that.

Good.

I feel relieved he's here.

I feel angry it took him this long.

I feel devastated from today.

But underneath all of it—happy.

Which is the most depressing thing I've ever felt.

That happy is still in there.