Chapter 15
Much later, when everything had settled into the kind of happiness I used to think only happened to other people, I asked Xander one final question.
“If I had never explained things that morning…”
He was lying on the couch with me folded against his side, one arm around my waist, the other absentmindedly playing with my fingers.
He didn’t even look up from the document he was reading.
“I would’ve explained them for you.”
I blinked. “How?”
“Badly, probably.”
That made me laugh.
Then he finally put the document down and looked at me.
“I would’ve kept following you around the library in those glasses.”
I started laughing harder.
He continued, perfectly serious, “If that didn’t work, I would’ve tried something else.”
“Like what?”
“Whatever got your attention.”
He said it so calmly that I believed him instantly.
I laughed until my stomach hurt, then gradually quieted and pressed my face against his chest.
After a while, I said softly, “Back then, when I first chased you, I really was thinking about the money.”
He hummed. “I know.”
“But somewhere along the way…”
I lifted my head and looked at him.
“It stopped being about that.”
His eyes changed.
I could always tell when he was trying not to show too much.
It never worked.
So I went on.
“I kept thinking I had trapped you. Controlled you. Forced you into staying with me.” I paused. “But the truth is, every time I looked back, you were still there.”
He let out a slow breath.
Then he touched my face with one hand and said quietly, “Because it was always going to be you.”
There were no floating numbers above his head anymore.
No system voice in my ear.
No mission to complete.
No reward waiting at the end.
Just Xander.
Just me.
And all the years between a little boy standing outside a village store and a man holding me now like he had been waiting his whole life to finally be sure I was his.
I smiled and kissed him.
He kissed me back.
And this time, neither of us needed a system to tell us what it meant.