STELLA
“You’re home.”
My heart tripped when the door opened and Christian entered.
At first glance, he looked the same as when he’d left—black shirt, black pants, hauntingly beautiful face—but a closer look revealed the quiet storm brewing in his eyes.
“You asked me to come home.” He watched, body still but gaze burning like an open flame, as I closed the distance between us. “So here I am.”
His rough velvet voice held a note of caution.
It’d been five hours since he left, and we both knew he hadn’t been at the office.
“Is…” I trailed off, not wanting to say Julian’s name.
“You don’t have to worry about him anymore.”
“Right.” I swallowed the hundred questions crowding my throat and went with a safer route. “I read the letters.”
All twenty of them. Each one wrung my heart like a knot pulled taut, because I knew how hard it was for Christian to share anything about his personal life.
Those letters weren’t just letters—they were pieces of him, poured from his soul and inked in black.
And I loved every piece, no matter how flawed or broken he thought it was.
The storm in Christian’s eyes threatened to suck me into its vortex.
“I meant what I wrote,” he said quietly. “Every word.”
“I know.” I pressed my lips to his jaw. He went still, his muscles taut and his breaths quickening as I kissed my way up his jaw to the corner of his mouth.
“Welcome home,” I whispered.
A small shudder went through him before he turned his head and our mouths met. Static filled me as he cupped my face with one hand and curled his other hand around the back of my neck.
Last night’s kiss had been soft, gentle. An easing into the waters after our separation and a comfort after a hellish day.
This one was passion and desperation, a thorough reclaiming of what we were and the birth of what we could be.
No lies, no secrets, just us.
I sank into the familiar glide of Christian’s tongue against mine and the warmth of his hand against the back of my neck.
I didn’t ask questions about what he did in the five hours he was gone.
The world wasn’t black and white, no matter how much I wished it were.
And sometimes, we found our happiness in the shades of gray.