We spent the entire night in a kind of soft fever.
Not the frantic kind—no jagged edges, no desperate scrambling for more like we were afraid it would disappear if we blinked. It was slower than that. Deeper. As if the truth he’d given me had rewired something in both of us and the only way our bodies knew how to respond was to keep touching.
We dozed in each other’s arms. We woke with our mouths already finding skin. We talked in low voices that felt too intimate for daylight—Connor’s voice rough and quiet, mine steady in a way I wasn’t used to hearing. We said things that weren’t dramatic, but felt like vows, anyway.
“I’m here,” he told me at some point, his forehead pressed to mine, his hand splayed across my back like he was anchoring me to the bed.
“I know,” I whispered.
And every time I said it, I believed it more.
We made love again—sensual, unhurried, almost reverent. Connor touched me like he was learning a language he’d beenhungry for his whole life. Like pleasure wasn’t just indulgence, but proof. Proof that a body could hold tenderness and hunger at the same time. Proof that connection didn’t have to be earned through suffering first.
He kissed me slowly until I forgot how to guard my reactions. Until every sound I made felt like permission instead of exposure.
And when he moved inside me, it was about joining. About choosing the same rhythm on purpose. About the steady press of his mouth against my shoulder as if he couldn’t stop reminding himself that I was real—here, alive, and still willing to be close to him after everything he’d told me.
After, he didn’t roll away.
He held me.
Not like a man clinging to something he didn’t deserve. Like a man who understood the weight of being trusted and intended to honor it with his entire body.
We talked again—about nothing and everything. About how Paris sounded at night, how the city hummed even through thick walls. About the residency, about Élodie’s sharp calm and the way she could disarm people without raising her voice. About my mother’s silences and Connor’s memories of his father cheering in the stands like love could be measured in decibels.
There were moments when Connor went quiet, the old vigilance flickering behind his eyes like a shadow crossing water.
And every time it happened, I didn’t rush him out of it.
I touched his cheek. I kissed his hand. I slid my fingers between his and held him there until his breath evened out again.
It was the strangest thing—how natural it felt.
How my body didn’t interpret his stillness as withdrawal. How I didn’t panic and try to fill the space. I could simply be init with him, without the old reflex to make myself smaller so the moment stayed safe.
And it struck me how little the external details seemed to matter right now. The ransacked apartment. The lingering unease of knowing someone had crossed that boundary. Even the small, daily frustrations I’d been carrying for months—the way my French still came out clumsy and hesitant, how conversations sometimes left me nodding and smiling instead of fully participating. None of it felt urgent in this moment. None of it felt like an obstacle.
I had the strangest, clearest sense that I could be happy anywhere, that place was suddenly negotiable. That as long as Connor was beside me—steady, present, choosing me back—the rest would arrange itself in time.
Safety, language, geography. Those were logistics. This was alignment.
Sometime in the deep stretch of night—when sleep came in fragments and our bodies kept finding each other without urgency—I found myself thinking about the call I’d made to my mother.
Not with anxiety. With something gentler.
The way her voice had sounded when I told her I was happy. The quiet acceptance in it.
Connor was half-asleep beside me when I said it aloud, my fingers tracing the slow rise and fall of his chest.
“I want you to meet her someday.”
His eyes opened fully then—not startled, just attentive.
“Your mom?” he asked quietly.
“Yes.” I smiled faintly. “I don’t know when. Or how. But I want her to see me like this. Whole. Not managing anything. Not apologizing for taking up space.”
He shifted onto his side, propping himself up enough to look at me properly. His gaze moved over my face with that steadyfocus that always made me feel like he was listening even before I spoke.
