“Don’t you stare at me like I went out and purchased those, and for that date no less. My grandma gave them to me. For my birthday. Early.” Had to make clear the important points. “I didn’t ask you because you were with Bernard, and then you weren’t but things were weird, and honestly who gives someone cruise tickets for Valentine’s Day? That’s basically a romantic gesture wrapped in nautical theming and I couldn’t exactly—”
“Sammy.”
“—ask you to come on what is essentially a Love Boat situation when I didn’t even know if—”
“Sammy.”
“—because that would require explaining feelings I’ve been very carefully not explaining for five years—”
“Sammy.” His hand gently covered my mouth. “Breathe.”
Right. Breathing. That thing lungs did.
A soft chuckle escaped him. “Your grandmother really went all out, huh? She probably had this planned the moment she met me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. And she has a crush on you,” I admitted. “It’s mortifying.”
“Merenda has excellent taste.” The tightness in his expression eased, replaced by quiet amusement. “Must run in the family.”
A laugh burst out of me and didn’t slow down. Something in the air shifted, the remaining tension that had been suffocating us for days cracked and crumbled. Suddenly we were just us again. Easy. Comfortable. Except with this new thing between us, fragile and terrifying and maybe wonderful.
“That confident?” I wiped at my eyes as the laughter began to fade. “You’re lucky the feeling’s mutual.”
He went completely still.
So did I.
“Has been for years,” I continued, because apparently now that the dam had broken, words were just going to keep spilling out. “I just never said anything because you were always with someone, and I didn’t want to ruin what we had, and honestly I’m terrible as this.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” The question came out rough, almost wounded.
“Same reason you didn’t tell me, I guess.” A small shrug. “Fear. Stupidity. The usual suspects.”
Something in his expression softened. Settled like a question he’d been carrying for years had finally been answered.
The radiator hummed. Snow tapped against the windows. Jazz drifted from the Bluetooth speaker in the corner—had that been playing this whole time?—something slow and intimate.
His thumb traced circles on the back of my hand. Light touches that made me shiver a little. Then his fingers slid between mine, lacing together, and the contact felt like we were finally connecting like we should’ve this whole time.
“We’re both blind,” he said quietly.
“Complete disasters at reading signals.”
“In my defense, you’re very good at hiding things,” he said.
“In my defense, you dated a guy named Bernard.”
Another laugh, this one closer to a breath. His free hand came up, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. The touch lingered. My breath hitched audibly, embarrassingly, and his eyes darkened at the sound.
Awareness prickled across my skin. Every nerve ending suddenly hyper-focused on his proximity. The heat of him. The way his gaze dropped to my mouth and stayed there.
Then he kissed me.
No preamble. No hesitation. Just his lips pressing against mine, soft at first, questioning. When I didn’t pull away—couldn’t have even if I’d wanted to—he deepened it. Tilted my chin up with gentle fingers and kissed me like he’d been thinking about this for years.
Because he had. God, he had.
A sound escaped my throat. Something between a gasp and a moan. Elijah swallowed it, his tongue sliding against mine, and my brain blue-screened completely. Everything narrowed to sensation—the pressure of his mouth, the scrape of stubble against my chin, the way his breath came faster when I gripped his shirt and pulled him closer.
