“And now?”
“Now I remember.” He leaned closer, and I could feel his breath on my lips. “And it’s terrifying. And wonderful. And I don’t want to wait anymore.”
I closed the distance. His lips found my neck.
His hands were in my hair. Mine were fisted in his shirt. We kissed like we were making up for lost time—all the weeks of careful restraint combusting into something urgent and hungry and a little bit desperate.
“Bedroom,” I managed against his mouth.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. I’m—” I pulled back enough to meet his eyes, needing him to see that I meant it. “No exit strategy. No backup plan. I want this. I want you.”
“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
I laughed—breathless, giddy—and let him lead me down the hallway.
His bedroom was simple. Clean. A bed with grey sheets, a nightstand with a lamp and a book he’d been reading, a window that let in the last orange light of sunset.
He stopped at the edge of the bed, turned to face me. “I should warn you—it’s been a while.”
“For me too.” I reached for the hem of my shirt, pulled it over my head. “We’ll figure it out.”
His breath caught. And then he was pulling me close, and we were falling onto the bed together, and there was laughter tangled up in it—nervous and real. Because we were both out of practice, and it was awkward, and neither of us quite knew what we were doing anymore.
But we figured it out.
Slowly. Carefully. Learning each other with hands and mouths and whispered words. He touched me like I was something precious, something he’d been waiting for without knowing he was waiting. And I touched him back—this man who had lost everything and was brave enough to try again.
I woketo sunlight and the weight of his arm across my waist.
For one terrifying second, I waited for the panic. The regret. The urgent need to escape, to put distance between myself and this thing I’d let happen.
It didn’t come.
I lay there, in Marcus Chen’s bed, in the golden morning light, and felt… peaceful. Content. Like every restless, spinning part of me had finally found somewhere to land.
He stirred. His arm tightened around me, pulling me closer.
“You snore,” Marcus said.
“I do not.”
“Like a very dignified chainsaw.”
“This relationship is over.”
“It’s really not.” He kissed my forehead, and I felt it all the way down to my toes. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”
I pressed my face into his chest, hiding my smile. “You’re very confident this morning.”
“I had a very good night.”
“Hmm.” I traced patterns on his skin, feeling him shiver under my touch. “Want to have a very good morning too?”
His answer was to roll me onto my back, and I laughed—bright and real and surprised by my own happiness.
Later,tangled in his sheets, I held up the brooch and watched it catch the lamplight.
