"You were right."

"Hm?"

"This is definitely better than skiing."

He chuckles, warm and low, watching her in the firelight as she leans forward to set her glass on the table. She grins at him over her shoulder, smiling wider as he opens his arms in invitation, and curls into him with a sigh of pure contentment. Head pillowed on his shoulder, his arms securely around her, she feels...

She feels...

God. She feels home.

"Jack?" His voice is warm in her ear, impossibly comforting, and she can't help it. She turns, hiding her face in his chest, free hand fisting in the worn cotton of his navy hoodie, and shudders with tears she's still too scared to shed.

This is impossible. It can't be happening, and yet it can't not be happening. She never wants to leave his arms, and it terrifies her.

He brushes a kiss to the top of her head and she shakes again, clutching him tighter, pressing even closer.

"Jack," he says again, more urgent now - she has to be scaring the hell out of him, but she can't help it. Can't hold on, can't let go... "Baby, talk to me," he says, and that does it. Eyes squeezed shut, she shakes her head, trembling all over.

"I can't," she whispers. Her voice hitches, then breaks - and then she's crying, hoarse, ugly sobs shuddering out of her as the barriers of a lifetime come tumbling down all at once.

"Ah, Jack," he whispers, and his arms tighten about her in instinctive reaction.

It was always going to be him; she knows that now. He's looked her brokenness square in the face and answered it with his own, understands her in a way so few ever have or ever will. They've been circling toward this from the moment they met, found trust before there was love, and now...

She cries and cries, holds on to the way he strokes her hair, the way he kisses her forehead and holds her close. He is not a demonstrative man but he is a caring one, more so than she thinks most people would ever suspect, and feels more deeply than all but a few would ever give him credit for. And now, with his voice in her ear and his breath on her hair, she's never felt so safe.

She never does know how long she cries; in the end she doesn't think it matters. Gently he tilts her chin up, wipes her tears away with his thumb as he looks her in the eyes. His gaze is impossibly blue and she feels herself drawn in, magnetized, helpless.

Nothing in the world, she thinks later, could have stopped her from kissing him then.

He groans against her mouth, arms crushing her to him, and her last worry vanishes as though it had never been.

Please, she thinks, helpless and aching as heat pools in her belly. Oh, please, yes.

Pulling away from her kiss nearly kills him.

She whimpers, eyes hooded, flushed and panting, and leans in again, but he stops her with a gentle hand on her cheek.

"This can't be casual."

Her eyes snap to his, all the mists of desire cleared in an instant, and he shrugs, helpless. There is no choice, not for him. This is everything... or nothing.

"I can't," he tries again, and clears his throat. "I can't be casual with you. Not with you. This is..."

This is everything, he wants to say. This is what I thought I'd never have again.

For a moment his thoughts drift to Holly - the long-ago love he'd loved so dearly, but had never quite, in the end, been able to let in completely. He doesn't regret her, not for an instant - how could he? - but somehow he also knows that this is who he's meant to be with, and the certainty stuns him.

Jack is different. Jack has always been different; he doesn't know how or when, he just knows that she is. Somehow she slipped inside his walls when he wasn't even looking, and now there is no other path for them than this.

Her eyes are dark with something else entirely now, her expression unreadable, and he holds his breath.

Then, quite deliberately, she takes one of his hands in hers, lacing their fingers together, squeezing tight. His breath stutters in his chest, and she wraps her other hand around their intertwined fingers, lifts his hand to her lips, and bows her head.

The brush of her lips on his knuckles says everything, and more. She kisses the weathered skin with passion, with reverence - even, he thinks, with wonder. She sniffles, tears still glimmering in her eyes, and when their eyes meet again he can see the flush on her cheeks.

"This was never going to be casual." Her voice is hoarse with longing, and something deep inside him snaps into place at last.

"You and me?" He can hardly dare to hope.

"You and me," she agrees, and then his free hand is on hers and they're holding on tight, so tight. "Til the end of the line."

He shudders, bows his head. Now it's his turn to kiss her hands, to say what he feels in the only way he knows how. She laughs, giddy and delighted, hiding her face against his chest, and it's the most natural thing in the world to gently disentangle their joined hands, to wrap his arms around her and hold her tight against him.

"It's you," he whispers in her ear. "It was always going to be you."

"I know." He can feel the curve of her smile against his chest, feels his own heart swell with it. "For me, too."

This time, when he kisses her, he never means to stop.