Chapter 401 Salty
Chapter 401 Salty
Mia’s POV
My hands came up.
Automatic. Like my body knew what to do before my brain caught up.
My palms hit his chest. Flat. Hard. Pushing.
But Kyle didn’t stop.
His mouth moved against mine.
Insistent.
My fingers curled into fists against his sweater. The fabric was soft. Cashmere maybe.
Push him away.
Push him away and leave and never come back to this house. Its empty rooms now were full of ghosts.
But his hands were in my hair now. Tilting my head back. Deepening the kiss.
And I felt my body do something I didn’t tell it to do.
My hands unclenched as they eeling the sharp edges of his bones under the sweater.
He’s so thin.
The thought came from nowhere. Unwanted.
His mouth tasted like salt. From my tears. Or his. I couldn’t tell anymore.
The kiss was wrong.
Not technically wrong. His lips knew mine. Remembered the shape of them. The pressure. The angle.
We’d done this a thousand times before.
But this kiss was so bitter.
His tongue touched my bottom lip. Asking.
I didn’t open my mouth.
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Just stood there with my hands on his shoulders and let him kiss me like I was something he was trying to memorize. Like he was trying to press me into his skin so he could carry me with him wherever he was going.
More tears came.
They mixed between our mouths. Salty. Warm.
He made a sound.
Small.
Like something hurting.
His hands moved from my hair to my face. Cupping my cheeks. His thumbs brushed under my eyes. Wiping away tears that kept coming anyway.
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Chapter 401 Salty
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I just stood there.
Let him take what he needed.
His forehead pressed against mine. His breath came fast. Uneven.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. Louder this time. His voice rough. “I’m so sorry, Mia.”
I opened my eyes.
His face was right there. So close I could see every detail. The hollow under his cheekbones. The lines around his eyes that hadn’t been there four years ago. The way his skin looked almost translucent in the morning light.
We stood there. His hands on my face. Mine on his shoulders. Both of us crying in a hallway that smelled like dust and old paint.
“This is our fate,” he said finally.
“What?”
“This.” He gestured vaguely. At me. At him. At the space between us. “Finding each other too late. Loving each other wrong. Having children together and not knowing how to be a family. Me dying before we figure it out.”
“Kyle-”
“It’s true.” His voice was flat now. Empty. “We’re not Romeo and Juliet, Mia. We’re not some tragic love story where everything works out in the end. We’re just two people who met as kids in a warehouse and imprinted on each other like baby ducks and spent the rest of our lives trying to make that mean something it couldn’t.”
I pulled back.
His hands fell away from my face.
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” I said.
Those stupid tears again.
I wiped my face with the back of my hand. Hard. Like I could scrub them away.
“You don’t get to do that,” I said.
“Do what?”
“I
‘Make it sound like some beautiful tragedy.” My voice cracked. “Bullshit.”
The word came out sharp. Mean.
Good.
“The doctor said he’d try,” I said. “He said herbs and meditation and—”
We stared at each other.
My chest hurt. That tight feeling like I couldn’t get enough air.
“You’ll be okay,” he said finally. “You’ll raise them. You’ll be amazing. You’ll meet someone who deserves you and-”
“Stop.”
The silence that followed was so loud it hurt.
Chapter 401 Solty
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I could hear my own heartbeat. Fast. Uneven.
Kyle’s breathing. Ragged.
Somewhere outside a car horn blared.
“I’m tired,” I said. Muffled. “I’m so goddamn tired.”
He sat down beside me. Not close. Just on the same step.
We sat there in silence.
His breathing slowly evened out.
Mine did too.
After a while he said: “Do you remember the warehouse?”
“Yes.”
“What do you remember about it?”
I thought back. Way back. To being six years old and scared and cold.
“I remember the dark,” I said. “And the smell. Like metal and oil.”
“What else?”
“You.” I looked at him. “I remember you. How you gave me your mother’s pendant. How you promised we’d get out.”
“I was so sure,” he said. Quiet. “So absolutely certain that if I just stayed calm and thought hard enough, I could figure out how
to save us. But I couldn’t. I was just a kid. And the only reason we got out is because the police found us.”
“So?”
“So I’ve spent my whole life trying to fix things. Trying to control outcomes.” He stopped.
“But I can’t control this.”
Chapter 402 Just strange
