Updated Nov 26, 2025 • ~6 min read
They went back to Lizzie’s apartment.
Not because it was decided or discussed. It just happened—Oliver’s hand in hers as they walked off the bridge, his car waiting, the silent drive through Manhattan. Neither spoke. Words felt too fragile for what was building between them.
Inside her apartment, Lizzie turned on the lights. Tried to figure out what came next. They’d kissed. They’d decided to try. But what did that mean?
Oliver stood by the door, watching her. Waiting.
“I don’t know how to do this,” Lizzie admitted.
“Do what?”
“Trust you. Let you close. Be vulnerable again.”
“We don’t have to figure it all out tonight.”
But the air between them felt charged, heavy with want and fear and something darker. More desperate.
Lizzie crossed to where he stood. Looked up at him, searching his face for the lie, the catch, the inevitable betrayal.
Found only Oliver. Stripped bare. Waiting for her.
“If we do this,” she said quietly, “it changes things.”
“I know.”
“It doesn’t fix what’s broken.”
“I know that too.”
“But I…” She struggled for words. “I need you. Right now. Even though I shouldn’t. Even though it’s probably a mistake.”
“Then make the mistake with me.”
Lizzie kissed him. Not gentle, not cautious. Hard and claiming, pouring a year’s worth of anger and longing into the press of her mouth against his. Oliver made a sound low in his throat, his hands coming up to her waist, pulling her closer.
They stumbled backward into the apartment. Lizzie kicked the door shut without breaking the kiss. Her fingers found his coat, pushed it off his shoulders. His hands tangled in her hair, tilted her head to deepen the kiss.
“Lizzie,” he breathed against her mouth. “Are you sure?”
“No. But I don’t care.”
They made it to her bedroom in a tangle of desperate hands and stolen breaths. Oliver’s shirt came off somewhere in the hallway. Lizzie’s dress hit the floor by the bed. Every touch felt like reclaiming something that had been stolen—her body, her desire, her right to want him despite everything.
“I dreamed about this,” Oliver whispered against her neck, her collarbone, her shoulder. “Every night for a year. Having you close. Touching you. Being allowed to love you.”
Lizzie didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Because if she spoke, she might tell him she’d dreamed the same thing. And that felt too vulnerable, too raw.
Instead, she pulled him down to the bed.
What followed wasn’t soft or sweet. It was messy and complicated and angry-tender, bodies relearning each other’s shapes and tastes and sounds. Lizzie had forgotten how Oliver kissed—thorough, focused, like every kiss was the only kiss that mattered. Had forgotten the way he touched her, reverent and desperate at once.
But her body remembered. Responded. Arched into him even as her mind screamed warnings.
This is dangerous, her thoughts whispered. This will hurt. You’re letting him in and he’ll destroy you again.
But louder, stronger: This is mine. He is mine. And I’m taking back what he took from me.
Clothes disappeared. Boundaries blurred. And when Oliver looked at her—really looked at her, his eyes dark and vulnerable and full of something that looked achingly like love—Lizzie felt something crack open in her chest.
“I love you,” he said again. “I need you to know that. Whatever happens, however this ends—I love you.”
“Show me,” Lizzie whispered. “Don’t tell me. Show me.”
And he did.
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Afterward, they lay tangled in her sheets, breathing hard, skin cooling. Lizzie’s head rested on Oliver’s chest, rising and falling with his breath. His hand traced lazy patterns on her back.
“Stay the night,” Lizzie said quietly.
“Are you sure?”
“No. But I don’t want you to leave.”
Oliver pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Then I’ll stay.”
They were quiet for a long time. Lizzie listened to Oliver’s heartbeat, steady and real beneath her ear. This was intimacy—not just the physical, but this. The after. The vulnerability of lying here together in the dark, defenses down.
“I’m scared,” she admitted.
“Of what?”
“That this was a mistake. That tomorrow I’ll wake up and regret it. That I’ve let you back in too soon and you’ll hurt me again.”
Oliver’s arms tightened around her. “Do you want me to leave?”
“No. That’s what scares me.” Lizzie lifted her head to look at him. “I should want you gone. Should be protecting myself. Instead, I want you to stay. Want to fall asleep next to you and wake up with you and pretend we’re normal people having a normal relationship.”
“Why can’t we be?”
“Because of the altar. Because of Maddie. Because of everything that happened.” She sat up, pulling the sheet around herself. “We’re not starting fresh, Oliver. We’re building on ruins.”
“Then we build something stronger than what was there before.”
“You make it sound simple.”
“It’s not. It’s going to be the hardest thing we’ve ever done. But Lizzie—” He sat up too, facing her. “I would rather fight for us on ruins than live comfortably with anyone else. You’re it for me. You always have been.”
“Don’t put that pressure on me.”
“It’s not pressure. It’s truth. You don’t have to feel the same way. You don’t have to love me back or forgive me or even trust me yet. But I need you to know: I’m all in. For as long as you’ll have me.”
Lizzie searched his face, looking for the catch. The angle. The hidden motive.
Found only truth.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she whispered.
“Neither do I. So we figure it out together.”
She lay back down, letting him pull her close. They fit together like they always had—her head on his shoulder, his arm around her waist, their legs tangled beneath the sheets.
“No lies,” Lizzie said into the darkness.
“No lies,” Oliver agreed.
“And no choosing other things over me.”
“Never.”
“And if it gets too hard, if I need space, you give it to me without complaint.”
“Whatever you need.”
Lizzie closed her eyes. Tomorrow, she’d probably regret this. Tomorrow, reality would set in—the complications, the fears, the very real possibility that they’d never work.
But tonight, wrapped in Oliver’s arms, feeling his breath even out as he fell asleep, Lizzie let herself believe.
Just for tonight.
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