He really added my name to the list.
He really wants me here.
Now I just wonder how he’ll react when he finds me here.
The elevator ride to the tenth floor feels too fast and too slow at the same time. When the doors open with a soft ding, I step out onto the quiet hallway, heart pounding.
His door is the last one on the right.
I unlock it with the key code he texted me weeks ago but have never had the nerve to use. It was easy to remember because it’s the day we started dating, 0912. The moment the latch clicks and I step inside, I’m hit with the familiar scent of him, cedar, clean laundry, and something warm and masculine that sinks right under my skin.
It smells like home.
It’s not just his scent, but his presence, his personality that fills the space. The apartment feels…comfy, like him. It’s masculine without being cold, organized without feeling staged, lived-in but still somehow peaceful and Zen. There’s an easy warmth to it, like every lamp is intentionally set to glow with soft light instead of bright LEDs. Floor-to-ceiling windows pour in the city lights that turns the whole space gold, catching on the dark leather sectional, the thick navy throw blanket draped over the back, the stack of hockey notes on the coffee table. It feels like a place someone built to come home to after long, bruising days. A space meant for exhaling, for decompressing, for being real. And underneath all of that, threaded through the air and the walls and the quiet, is something I didn’t expect at all, the unmistakable sense that he lives alone…like he’s been waiting for someone to walk in and fill the space.
Someone like me.
There’s a jacket draped over the back of the couch, and a pair of running shoes kicked off beside the entryway bench. There are two mugs in the kitchen sink along with one small plate and a fork. He has an impressive set of cookware that I wonder how often he uses.
This is his space.
And tonight, it’s mine too.
I set down my bag and wander slowly, fingertips brushing a bookshelf, the back of the couch, the edge of a framed print. Everything feels intimate in a way that makes my chest tight.
His living room wall is lined with photos; team shots, childhood pictures, random candid snapshots that must mean something to him. I’m halfway through admiring an old black-and-white of him and his teammates when my gaze catches on a frame near the top corner.
I freeze.
It’s us.
The picture is from that summer charity event when we were… what, nineteen? Twenty? I’d forgotten it existed. It’s the one where he tossed his arm around me last minute right as the photographer clicked, both of us laughing too hard to pose.
My hair’s a disaster and I’m mid-laugh.
This is the night we started dating.
He still has it.
Displayed. Not tucked away. Not hidden in a drawer. Right there on the wall like it’s important. Like it means something.
My throat tightens painfully.
“I can’t believe he kept this,” I whisper to no one as I reach up and run my fingers over the frame. Harrison looks so young in it. Hopeful, sunburned, grinning like he thought the world was about to open up for him.
Because it was.
What I never noticed in this picture before now was how he’s looking at meand not the camera.
God.
I sink onto the arm of the couch, staring at us, and then look around the apartment again, the quiet, the stillness, the sense of being let into a part of him that no one else gets to see.
He wanted me here.
Hewantsme here.
The realization warms me from the inside out.
