A text.
Please come to the window. —L
My heart stuttered.
I shifted off the bed and padded across the carpet, the room dim, night pressed thick against the glass. I pulled back the curtain.
And I froze.
It was fully dark outside, the sidewalk below lit only by scattered streetlamps and the soft spill of hotel light—but I’d have recognized him anywhere. Levi was standing three floors down, hands in his pockets, looking up at me with a smile that hit me dead-center.
He didn’t wave.
He didn’t shout.
He just stood there, steady and sure, like a man offering something wordless and enormous.
I threw on a hoodie and shoved my feet into shoes without socks, taking the elevator because stairs felt impossible.
When I pushed through the front doors, he was waiting just outside, leaning against one of the brick columns like he’d been carved there.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, breathless.
He held up something between two fingers.
A small paper bag.
“She-crab soup,” he said, lifting the bag. “Still hot. I hear you didn’t eat enough at lunch to count as a real meal.”
My heart clenched.
“I ate plenty,” I protested weakly.
“You picked,” he said.
I laughed, startled.
But then he reached into the bag and pulled out a second item—a small plastic container.
I blinked. “What’s that?”
He stepped closer, lowering his voice the way he always did when something mattered.
“You mentioned once,” he said, “that after long assignments, the first thing you used to do when you got home was buy that weird probiotic yogurt from the grocery store because it tasted like nothing you could get overseas. I figured you could keep some in the fridge in your room.”
I stared at him.
“That was years ago,” I whispered.
He shrugged a little, almost shy. “I remember things.”
A crack formed in me—clean, soft, opening instead of splitting.
“Levi …”
“There’s more,” he said quickly, like he didn’t want me to think yogurt was the whole gesture. He held out his palm.
In it sat a tiny, cheap compass.
