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Her lips pressed over his. Suddenly he stopped trying to make frantic inhales—suddenly he forgot that he needed to draw breath at all when there was the softness of her presence and a sharp, fragrant taste on his tongue, spreading as molten gold might. His heart slowed from its usual breakneck clamor. His body calmed like a weapon tempered under heat.
He had the temptation to pluck her up as if she were a bloom too, to hear a proper laugh and store it away in a place no one could ever take from him again.
she would probably bite him if he tried.
You… are a person first and an operative… second. How many times have I taught you that?”
“Take deep breaths! Remember, I love you all!”
I will love you if I please. I will make you my altar, I’ll put you above everything else in this world, I’ll revel in every morsel you are made of. It’s simple—just tell me you don’t feel the same, and I’ll let you go. But I won’t accept anything else. I won’t accept your refusal on the make-believe grounds of our work.”
“How do I live with myself if there ever comes a day you get hurt because of me?”
“Because that’s what it means to be alive. That’s what it means to fight for something—to love something. The country is good enough for us to die for. Why wouldn’t you be?”
“Okay,” he echoed. “Have we settled that? Can I kiss you again?”
“Kiss me. Please.”
Rosalind couldn’t help herself. She sighed, putting her arms around his neck and burying her face into his shoulder. Orion’s arm wound around her waist on instinct, resting against her in return even as he said: “I’m all right. Really.”
“I love you,” Orion said in lieu of a reply, in perfect replacement of any straightforward answer. “I love you, I love you, I’m sorry I said so many stupid things.
No longer observed by witnesses, he leaned in, and then he was kissing her to make up for every day they had lost, every week that had been stolen, every month spent torn apart. Just as Rosalind had known that his memories had come back by the tone of his voice, it was clear at once that there was a difference in this, the hum of her skin where there was contact, the sheer familiarity when he touched the back of her neck and she rose to the tip of her toes.
She wasn’t built to be the savior—she was only a girl afraid of the world, and then Orion had come along to pull her out of the pit she had dug herself.
“Who was yelling at me?” he rasped. “I heard it all the way in the afterlife.”
