“It was . . . I’m not sure how to explain it,” she murmured. “I think it was an attempt to regain control over my sexuality—if I put myself out there and behaved overly sexual on my own terms, no one else could try to take anything from me without my permission. Didn’t really work out though. I still had this obsessive need for control whenever I was with someone and always dropped them before things could get serious.” Her lips curved into a faint smile. “Until you came around and somehow smashed all the walls I’d spent so much time building.”

Warmth flooded my veins at that, thawing the frost that had coated my insides. Before I could think better of it, I reached across and intertwined my fingers with hers. “Thank you for letting me in,” I whispered. “You’re the strongest person I know.

Truly.”

Noelle’s smile widened and reached her eyes, lit up her face, lit up the entire hallway. Her voice was like honey when she muttered, “Come here.”

A heartbeat later, her hands caught my face and the world fell away. With her lips on mine, I, for the first time since I had found her hasty note, didn’t feel like I was trapped in a fever dream. In the kiss was everything we hadn’t gotten to say yet: I’m sorry, I missed you, I’m so glad you’re okay. I thought I’d lost you. I can’t lose you.

“There aren’t any other things I should know about, are there?” I breathlessly asked when I pulled back, my forehead still resting against hers and our hands lying intertwined on the armrest between us.

“Just one,” she said, her voice as sure as her fingers where they curled around the back of my neck. “I love you.”

Oh. There they were; the three words I had read so many times, had heard in films, had imagined over and over again someone saying to me. However, nothing had been able to prepare me for the feeling of hearing them in Noelle’s voice, spoken like a promise, with her eyes wide and earnest and her lips a breath away. “I love you too,” I said, dangerously close to crying once again, but this time for an entirely different reason.

“Though that’s not really a secret anymore, is it?”

“Secrets are overrated anyway,” Noelle whispered and kissed me again. And again and again and again, until I felt dizzy from it and the only thought my endorphin-flooded brain could produce was a frenzied Thank you to the universe.

For years, I had been so in love with the idea of love—the perfect kind, the one that was pressed between two spines and flickered across silver screens—I had lost sight of what it really meant. Now, I understood that, in reality, it didn’t have to be perfect or dramatic or shiny enough for everyone else to see. It was the fairy lights in our room and the sweater I had brought her and the sweets she only ever shared with me. It was Noelle remembering my favorite band and listening when I talked about my books and asking for consent every time she kissed me. It was the racing of my heart when her team won and being unable to sit still when she got hurt and knowing where to find her when she had fled into the sea of stars that one night. More than everything, it was shakily laying yourself bare over and over again and trusting the other would be gentle with the scars they found.