"Where have you been?"I ask, my voice barely above a whisper, not wanting to break the spell he's cast around us.
"Ollie locked Jake and me in a room until we talked to each other," Nate says, his breath warm against my ear.
I turn in his arms to face him, raising an eyebrow."And how did that go?"
"Surprisingly, okay.Good even."He moves closer, his arms sliding around my waist as mine find their way around his neck, and I can see the genuine relief in his expression."I mean, we have a long way to go, but it feels good that he can finally stand being in the same room as me for longer than thirty seconds."
"That's good," I say, letting myself sink deeper into his embrace.
Without thinking, I rest my head against his chest, and his arms tighten around me.The hug feels like everything I've ever needed—safe and warm and exactly where I'm meant to be.He places a kiss on top of my head, lingering there, and I feel his cheek rest against my hair.
"What's going through that beautiful and wild mind of yours?"he asks.
I tilt my head up to look at him, my chin resting against his chest so I can meet his eyes.
"Do you believe in coincidences?"
"No," he says without hesitation, one hand moving to gently tuck a strand of hair behind my ear.The simple touch sends shivers down my spine.
"Nothing is a coincidence."
"Then what is it?"
He considers this, his thumb tracing gentle patterns on my back that make me want to arch into his touch.
"Synchronicity.Coincidence implies randomness—two things happening at the same time by pure chance.But synchronicity is different.It's when everything aligns in a way that feels meaningful and purposeful."
His hand moves to cup my face gently, stroking my cheek with a featherlight touch that makes my breath catch in my throat.I study his face, marveling at how his mind works, how he can take the chaos in my head and make it make sense.
"Go on," I whisper, completely captivated.
"In Eastern philosophy, they believe that certain souls are connected by invisible threads, that we're drawn to each other across time and space because something in us recognizes something in them."His eyes search mine with an intensity that makes my heart race."Like two people can be living completely separate lives, making different choices, following different paths, and yet somehow..."He pauses, his eyes finding what they're looking for in mine, and when he smiles, it's radiant."They keep finding their way back to each other."
"Do you think we were always meant to find each other?"
"I think," he says, taking my hands and bringing them to his lips, pressing gentle kisses to my knuckles that make my heart stutter, "that you and I have been looking for each other our whole lives, even when we didn't know it."
He holds my hands between us, tracing the inside of my palm with his fingertip.The touch is intimate and gentle, his expression serious as he follows the lines across my skin like he's reading something sacred.
"You can read palms now too?"I ask, trying to keep my voice light despite the way my heart is racing.
"Yeah," he says, not looking up from my hand.
"What's my future then?"
His eyes lift to mine, and I swear they light up like a thousand stars.A smile crosses his lips—genuine and radiant and completely transformative.
"Us," he says simply.
The word hangs between us.
He takes my hand and places his other arm around my waist, pulling me close until there's no space between us.
In the distance, I can hear the faint strains of music drifting from the reception“I Shall Believe”—Mom's favorite song.We begin to sway together, our own private dance at the end of the dock under a canopy of stars.
Our eyes hold each other with an intensity that steals my breath, the way they always have, like we're the only two people in the world.
This is one of those moments that only exists when he's with me, where everything else ceases to exist because we found each other in the midst of chaos.Maybe this is what he means about synchronicity—how all the broken pieces of our lives somehow aligned perfectly to bring us to this exact moment, on this dock, under these stars, with his heart beating against mine.
