The apartment was quiet—the kind that makes you hyperaware of your own breathing, your own heartbeat, the precise distance between your body and someone else.
I should say goodnight. I should leave before I did something that changed everything.
But then Maya turned to face me, and the look in her eyes pinned me where I stood.
"I need to tell you something."
She took a breath and let it out slowly.
"You know about David. How he made me feel like I was too much and not enough." She wrapped her arms around herself. "But I never told you how it ended."
I stayed quiet and waited patiently for her to finish.
"He didn't just leave." Her voice went flat. "He left me for someone else. A woman from his office. She was just a few years younger. No kids. She had time to go to happy hour and weekend getaways and didn't come home smelling like finger paint and exhaustion."
My jaw clenched so hard my teeth ached.
"He told me about her like he was doing me a favor. Like I should be grateful he was being honest." She laughed, but there was no humor in it. "He said she was easier. That being with me felt like work. That he deserved someone who could actually be present instead of always being half-focused on Zoe."
Something dark and hot coiled in my chest. I wanted to find this guy, to show up at whatever office he worked in and drag him out by his collar. I wanted to make him explain to me, to Maya, to Zoe, how he could look at this woman and see anything other than someone worth fighting for. How he could take her loyalty, her softness, her years of trying, and throw them away foreasier.
I’d never wanted to hurt someone I’d never met. But for David, I’d make an exception.
"The worst part?" Maya's voice cracked. "Part of me believed him. Part of me still does. That I’m too complicated. Too exhausting. Too much work to want long-term."
She finally looked at me, and the fear in her eyes nearly broke me.
"I've been waiting for you to figure that out," she whispered. "To realize I'm not worth the effort. That Zoe and I are too much."
I couldn't stay still anymore.
Three steps and I was in front of her. My hands found her face, cupped her jaw, tilted her chin up so she had to look at me.
"Maya." My voice came out rough and wrecked. "You're the only real thing I've had in years."
She opened her mouth to argue, probably to list all the reasons she thought she wasn't enough, and I couldn't let her.
"Don't," I said. "I've spent three years surrounded by people who only want the headline. The calendar. The hero." My forehead dropped to hers. "None of them sees me. None of them wants to. But you do. You see me. Really see me. The one who's tired and scared and terrible at dancing."
She made a sound that was half laugh, half sob.
"I'm not going anywhere," I said. "I don't care how complicated it is. I don't care how much work it takes."
"Shane—"
"I'm staying."
She looked at me. Her eyes were wet, her lips parted, her chest rising and falling with uneven breaths. The lamplight caught the tears on her lashes. She was so beautiful it hurt. Beautiful and scared, still half-convinced I would walk away
I was done letting her believe that.
My thumbs traced her cheekbones. My fingers slid deeper into her hair, cradling her head. I watched her eyes flutter closed, felt her breath catch against my lips.
And then I kissed her.
She tasted like relief. Like finally. Like every wall I'd built, crumbling to dust.
I'd imagined kissing her. More times than I'd admit. When she laughed at something I said, her whole face changed. When she fell asleep on the couch, grading papers and I had to stop myself from brushing the hair off her forehead. When she stood too close in her tiny kitchen, I could smell her shampoo. When she looked at me like I was just a man, not a headline, not a hero, just someone she was starting to trust.
