I’d been braced, without realizing it, for the aftermath I’d always known. The subtle pulling away. The sense that something precious had already peaked and was now receding. That familiar emotional hangover where you wonder if the closeness was situational, circumstantial, a temporary alignment of want rather than something durable.
But this felt … anchored.
I felt him there beside me, solid and unmistakably present, and something in me marveled at the fact that my body wasn’t scrambling for reassurance. I didn’t feel the urge to cling. I didn’t feel the instinct to withdraw first, to protect myself from the disappointment I’d learned to expect.
Instead, there was recognition.
A quiet, steady awareness that whatever this was hadn’t been spent in a single night. That it hadn’t been used up by touch or intensity or release. It was still here, humming beneath my skin, as if time itself had bent around us and decided not to intrude.
The thought came unbidden, almost shyly:I feel like I’ve known you forever.
Not in the romanticized, dramatic way people say it when they mean familiarity or chemistry. But in a deeper sense—like my nervous system recognized his before my mind had caught up. Like something ancient and patient had been waiting for this exact configuration of moments and choices and timing to finally click into place.
It made me think about inevitability.
About how some things don’t announce themselves as destiny when they arrive. They slip in quietly, disguised as coincidence. A glance held a second too long. A presence thatrearranges the room without touching anything. A feeling that doesn’t ask permission, only recognition.
I’d never believed much in fate. I’d always thought of my life as a series of careful, incremental decisions—small steps taken to avoid damage, to stay intact. But lying here with Connor, the shape of him warm and real beside me, I felt the unsettling pull of another possibility.
What if some things are chosen long before we’re conscious of choosing them?
What if all my almosts—the way I’d hovered at the edge of wanting, the way I’d learned to live half-lit and half-held—had been leading me here, not as preparation for loss, but as preparation for this kind of presence?
Wow.
Eventually, Connor shifted, rolling slightly so he could look at me. The movement was unhurried, unguarded. His eyes were darker than usual, stripped of their habitual vigilance, like he’d set something down he carried too often and forgotten, for once, to pick it back up.
The sight of him like that—open, quiet, undeniably here—did something tender and dangerous to my chest.
In that moment, I understood something I’d never experienced before: that connection didn’t have to burn itself out to prove it was real. That intensity and steadiness weren’t opposites. That maybe what I was feeling wasn’t the thrill of something fleeting, but the gravity of something that had finally arrived where it belonged.
It made me want to stay.
To be known.
To stop living in the almosts and step fully into the inevitability of whatever this was becoming.
“You’re very quiet,” he said.
“I’m thinking,” I replied.
“I’m guessing that means you’re about to say something important.”
I smiled faintly. “You make it sound dangerous.”
His thumb brushed my hip in a slow, soothing stroke. “It usually is.”
I propped myself up on my elbow so I could see him properly. Really see him. The faint crease between his brows that never fully disappeared. The way his mouth held tension even when he smiled. The scars he didn’t talk about.
“I see you,” I said softly.
He stilled.
“I don’t just mean … this,” I continued, gesturing vaguely between us. “I mean you. The way you move through the world. The way you carry responsibility like it’s muscle memory. The way you think you’re dangerous but still show up like you’re trying to protect something fragile.”
His jaw tightened, just a little.
“You don’t know everything,” he said.
