My throat tightens.
Because I understand redirected storms. I understand the labor of appearing fine when every internal metric is flashing red. I understand the exhaustion of being the person who holds it together, who smiles at the appropriate moments and absorbs the hits without flinching, who collapses only in private and only after confirming that no one is watching.
We are the same, Etienne and I. Constructed from different materials but built on identical blueprints of survival.
He squeezes my hand, his expression brightening with a warmth that chases the melancholy from his features like sunlight burning through overcast skies.
"Having you enter my life is strange to me," he confesses, and the word strange arrives wrapped in wonder rather than discomfort. "Because I am experiencing emotions I only ever wrote about. Feelings I assigned to fictional characters because I assumed they were too extravagant for my actual existence. And they are making me want to write again."
My breath catches.
"I had a block," he continues. "That is why I never finished Carlos's story. Why the manuscript sits incomplete in that journal, the threads dangling, the ending unwritten. The words stopped coming because the emotions fueling them dried up, and you cannot write convincingly about love when you have never touched it."
He lifts my hand to his lips.
The gesture is unhurried. He raises our joined fingers with the deliberation of someone performing an act that matters, and when his lips press against the back of my palm, the contact is warm and firm and intentional. Not a quick brush. A real kiss, held for two full seconds, his breath pooling hot against my knuckles while his cedar-and-ink scent intensifies to a concentration that makes my pulse stagger.
"Thank you, ma belle," he whispers against my skin.
Ma belle. My beautiful. The French endearment curls through the cold air between us, landing in my chest with the soft precision of a key sliding into a lock it was carved for. I have been called many things by many people. Sweetheart, by shelter workers who meant well but could not remember my name. Honey, by strangers who wanted compliance disguised as kindness. Girl, by Alphas who saw a designation before they saw a person.
No one has ever called me their beautiful.
The blush that erupts across my face is nuclear.
"You are giving me butterflies," I mutter, scrunching my nose. "Ew."
He laughs.
A full, genuine burst of amusement at my cringe expression, the sound ringing out in the quiet street with a brightness that makes a passing couple glance our way and smile. His eyes crinkle at the corners, his shoulders shaking with the force of it, and watching Etienne Laurent laugh without restraint is one of those experiences that rewires your understanding of a person in real time.
I pout.
"Stop laughing at my emotional vulnerability, you monster."
"I am not laughing at you. I am laughing because you said ew to butterflies. Most people consider that a positive romantic indicator."
"Most people have not had butterflies weaponized against them by a man with a black Amex and an unfairly symmetrical face."
His laughter softens into a grin, and we stand there in the glow of a boutique window, him amused and me flustered, the dynamic between us so natural it frightens me.
I shuffle forward.
Close the gap between us until I have to tilt my chin up to meet his eyes. His scent is everywhere at this distance, cedar and pine and the faint note of ink on parchment, so concentrated it fills my lungs with each inhale and makes my Omega instincts purr with a contentment that borders on obscene.
"Can I have a kiss again?" I whisper.
The request leaves my mouth wrapped in a shyness that I did not authorize, my voice dropping to a volume that a passing breeze could steal. I can feel the heat in my cheeks intensifying,the blush climbing toward my ears, and I am acutely aware that I am a grown woman asking for a kiss with the tentative energy of a teenager at her first dance.
Etienne tilts his head to one side, studying me with an expression that is equal parts tender and curious.
"Why do you seem so shy about it?" he asks. Quiet. Not teasing. Genuinely wanting to understand.
I fidget with the hem of my jacket, my gaze dropping to the buttons on his coat because maintaining eye contact during this particular confession feels like holding a live wire.
"I have not really kissed a lot," I admit. "Which probably sounds weird. But I have never really kissed anyone... romantically."
The distinction matters. It matters because there is a chasm between the mechanical, transactional kisses that preceded meaningless encounters in communal housing and the deliberate, tender press of lips that carries intention behind it. I have experienced the former. Mouths meeting out of boredom or loneliness or the desperate need to feel wanted for five minutes before the emptiness returned. Kisses that served a function the way a handshake serves a function, necessary for the transaction but void of sentiment.
