Kai didn't think.
Didn't blink.
Didn't breathe.
The instant his eyes found Noah—the actual Noah, standing there a hair's breadth away, soaked in Paris rain and memory—he took off.
No warning.
No words.
Just heart.
He slammed into Noah, arms wrapped around the lapels of his coat, dragging him in with a strength so primal it shuddered through his spine.
Their mouths clashed—a kiss not forged from sweetness, but from ache. From lost years. From screams into pillows muffled.
It was cruel, desperate, shattered.
Noah stepped back a pace under the force of it, coffee cup falling from his grasp, shattering on the ground.
His hands hung—paralyzed—then closed around Kai's shoulders.
And gradually, agonizingly…
He shoved him away.
Not roughly.
But firmly.
As if shedding himself of something in the past he wasn't yet prepared to confront.
"Kai," Noah panted, eyes wide, voice full of something halfway between panic and grief. "What are you doing?"
