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I took her face in my hands and kissed her.

It started so gentle. It was the way you touch someone you're not sure is real yet, carefully, like if you press too hard, it'll turn out to be a dream, and you'll wake up somewhere cold and alone. Her hands found my waist. Her forehead dropped to rest against mine, and we just breathed for a moment, her breath warm against my mouth, and I felt her shaking.

Then she kissed me back.

She was not careful at all.

It wasn't the kiss from Isla's kitchen. That one had been urgent and borrowed and edged with weeks of tension. It wasn't the kiss against her front door, either, the one we'd both known was a goodbye before it was over. This was three weeks of missing each other in empty rooms, finally finding somewhere to go. This was two people who had been circling the same truth for weeks and had stopped fighting it. Her hands were in my hair, and I had both fists in the front of her henley again, and I could taste salt, hers and mine, and I thought, very clearly, the way you think a prayer: I love her. I love her so fucking much.

We broke apart at the same moment, breathing hard. Her eyes were very dark.

I was exhausted. I'd been bracing for weeks and was finally allowed to stop. My body had been running on adrenaline and grief for hours, and it was starting to understand the emergency was over.

Cam noticed. Of course she noticed.

"You should sleep," she said quietly.

"I'm fine."

"Harper."

"I'm not even tired."

She gave me a look that said, very efficiently, exactly how convincing that was.

"Okay," I said. "I'm extremely tired. But I don't..." I stopped and let myself be honest. "I don't want you to leave. That's what I'm trying to say. I've had enough nights of this alone."

Her face shifted. She looked uncertain, but not guarded. "Are you sure you want me here, Harper?"

"I just told you I'm in love with you and cried on your henley twice in one night," I said. "I'm past the point of being anything other than sure."

I didn't get a vote in what happened next.

She picked me up like it was the most ordinary Tuesday task in her repertoire, which it was not. I would have had words about that, except I was already laughing and a little undone by how easy it was for her. She carried me down the hall toward my bedroom like she knew exactly where she was going, which she shouldn't have, except she'd clearly mapped my entire apartment in the first five minutes, the way she mapped everything.

"I can walk," I said into her shoulder.

"I know."

"This is unnecessary."

"I know that too."

"You're doing it anyway."

"Correct."

She set me down on my bed so gently it nearly shattered me all over again. She pulled the covers back and tucked them around me like she was only thinking about my comfort and not at all about the face I was making at her, which I was trying to keep neutral and failing completely.

Then she paused, looking at my hair.

"Wait," she said. "Where's your...?"

I stared at her. "My what?"

"Your bonnet." The tips of her ears went red. "You said it the first night, right before you fell asleep. That you never sleep without it. That your hair would hate you in the morning." She looked away. "I didn't have one for you. I've thought about that a lot."

I could not breathe.