We stayed like that for a while, both of us in desperate need of the chance to regulate, to just savor one another’s presence. Cair gradually calmed with every hiccupping gasp of my scent, his body swaying with exhaustion, but I used what little strength I had to keep him steady. He didn’t speak, but he touched me, hands trailing down my sides, my collarbones, my neck, his fingers so achingly delicate and unsure. It had tears flowing down my own cheeks.

He must have sensed their salty tang as he withdrew just enough to cup my face, his thumb cruising through the wetness as his other hand found my hair, playing with the curls. Feather-light, he brushed over my lips. They were dry and no doubt cracked, but it didn’t stop him. It was as if he was tracing me, following each line and curve to make sure everything was still the same. Reassuring himself that I was still the same Luca he had lost.

As if needing further confirmation, he inched forward, impulse leading him, but he seemed to blink back to clarity, and started to retreat.

I clutched at his shirt. “Do it.” The words left my tongue as a plea, a hopeless little whisper, and the way he looked at me, the gratitude in his red-rimmed eyes had my heart splintering into a million tiny shards.

With no further encouragement needed, he closed the distance, doing what he’d set out to do, and oh-so-softly pressed his lips to mine. It was sweet, and it was brief, but it was perfect, and once we parted, it was only so he could rest his forehead against mine, not yet ready to pull away completely. He closed his eyes, his frame sagging as if that small taste of me had lit up a sign in his head that said “he’s yours” and he could finally let himself unwind.

“You’re really here,” he rasped, his breath fanning my lips, and that one simple line broke me a little bit more. “You didn’t leave me.”

It was obvious he’d spent the last however long in a state of tension and anguish, so lost inside his mind that he could barely trust his instincts to tell him the truth—that I was here, that it wasn’t a dream—until he had kissed me.

“I’m here.”