He smiles—soft, private, just for me—and picks up the pace. Still gentle, but deeper now, hitting a spot that makes stars burst behind my eyes.
“I love you,” he says. “I love your brain and your laugh and the way you explain things with your hands. I love that you eat pizza crusts first and argue with podcasts out loud. I love that you came back from Sweden even though I gave you every reason not to.” He thrusts deeper, and I gasp. “I love that you’re here. In my bed. In my life. I never thought I’d have this.”
“Logan—” I’m crying now, tears sliding down my temples into my hair. Not from sadness. From the overwhelming fullness of being seen. Being known. Being loved exactly as I am.
“Come for me,” he whispers. “One more time. Let me feel you.”
I shatter. Quietly this time, a gentle undoing rather than an explosion. He follows moments later, spilling into me with a groan, his forehead pressed to mine, our breath mingling in the space between us.
For a long time, we just lie there. Still connected, still tangled together, the sweat cooling on our skin. His weight is comforting rather than crushing. I don’t want him to move.
Eventually, he does—rolling to the side, pulling me with him so my head rests on his chest. His heart beats steady under my ear. Strong and sure.
“Hey, Audrey?”
“Hmm?”
“I don’t think I want to live here anymore.”
I lift my head to look at him. His expression is thoughtful, distant.
“Is that because we didn’t get to have sex in all the rooms?”
He laughs. “It would probably take a few days to literally do that. There are a lot of rooms.” His smile fades into something more serious. “But no. That’s not why.”
“Then why?”
He’s quiet for a moment, his fingers tracing patterns on my shoulder.
“This house belongs to my family. It’s been in the Whitman name for generations. Every room has a memory attached to it—most of them not good.” He exhales slowly. “I bought it because I thought I was supposed to. Because it was expected. Because owning the family home was supposed to mean something,provesomething.”
“And now?”
“Now I realize I don’t have to prove anything to them—never really did.” He turns to look at me, and his eyes are soft in the moonlight. “So I want to start fresh. Somewhere that’s just ours. No history, no expectations, no ghosts. Just you and me, building something new, something that’s ours.”
My heart is doing something complicated in my chest. “Logan...”
“I know it’s a lot. I know we’ve only been together for a few months. And I’m not trying to pressure you into anything, I just?—”
“Is this your way of asking me to move in with you?”
He stops. Blinks. “I... yes? I think so? I had a whole speech prepared, but I seem to have skipped to the end.”
“You had a speech?”
“I had bullet points. And a PowerPoint deck. Dominic said the PowerPoint was overkill, but I wanted to present the financial advantages clearly, along with a cost-benefit analysis of cohabitation versus maintaining separate residences, and a proposed timeline for?—”
I kiss him. It’s the only way to stop the word avalanche.
When I pull back, he’s dazed. “Was that a yes?”
“That was a ‘shut up and let me answer.’” I sit up, looking down at him—this ridiculous, wonderful, utterly impossible man who built a chatbot just so he could practice talking to me, and made spreadsheets and PowerPoints and just asked me to move in with him using a cost-benefit analysis. “Yes, Logan. I’ll move in with you.”
“Really?”
“Really. On one condition.”
“Name it.”
