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His jaw flexed once, subtle but there.

“Awareness,” he said.

That word again.

It threaded through everything now. My thoughts. My body. The way I existed in proximity to him.

“I see you differently,” I said before I could overthink it.

Silence.

Then, “How?”

I swallowed, trying to put it into something that didn’t feel too revealing.

“You’re not just …” I trailed off, searching. “What I expected.”

His mouth curved faintly. “You expected something simpler.”

“Yes.”

“More predictable.”

“Yes.”

A pause.

“And now?”

I turned my head, meeting his gaze for a brief second before he looked back at the road.

“Now, I think you choose more than I realized,” I said.

That landed.

I saw it in the slight shift of his shoulders.

“And you didn’t think I did before?” he asked.

“I thought you operated on instinct,” I admitted.

“I do.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“No,” he agreed. “It isn’t.”

The car fell quiet again, but it wasn’t the same silence as before. It held something new—something layered, aware, alive in a way that made every small movement feel amplified.

“What about you?” I asked after a moment.

His brow lifted slightly. “What about me?”

“You see me differently now.”

It wasn’t a question.

He didn’t answer right away.