He huffs a breath, not quite a laugh. “I keep waiting for it to feel fake.”
“Does it?”
He meets my eyes. “No.” A pause. “That’s what scares me.”
I cross to him before I can think too much. The floor feels soft under my boots, the air too thin. Up close, his eyes are dark honey, reflecting every bit of light in the room. I reach for his hand. He lets me. The makeshift ring glints, thin and new, catching between our fingers.
“Hey,” I say softly. “We’re sober enough to know what we did.”
He nods, slow. “That’s the problem. I remember every second.”
“Good.” I smile. “Then you’ll remember this too.”
He exhales, and the sound is almost a tremor.
For a heartbeat, I expect him to pull back, to armor up. But he doesn’t. His thumb drifts across my knuckles, small, absent, like he’s testing the weight of touch.
“I can’t stop looking at you,” he says quietly. “Like I’m trying to make sure you’re real.”
I want to tell him I feel the same—that since the ceremony, my brain has been a static roar of disbelief and hunger—but the words get lost somewhere between my ribs. Instead, I step closer until the space between us disappears.
“Then look,” I whisper.
His eyes drop to my mouth.
The first kiss is careful, almost polite, the way you touch something fragile. Then it deepens—slow, unhurried, the kind of kiss that starts as a question and turns into an answer you didn’t know you needed. His hand slides to the back of my neck, and I swear I can feel his pulse against my skin.
When we break, we’re both breathing hard. His forehead rests against mine.
I brush my thumb along his jaw; he turns his head and kisses the heel of my hand.
The room feels smaller now, warmer.
We end up by the window without realizing how we got there. The city sprawls below us—neon rivers, pulsing signs, and a thousand people chasing the next thrill. Up here, it’s just us, caught between reflection and glass.
“Do you regret it?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer right away. The silence stretches, filled with the hum of air-conditioning and our uneven breathing.
Then he says, “No.” A beat later, he adds, “But I don’t know how we’ll make it work.”
“We will.”
He looks at me, eyes sharp with something like fear. “You sound sure.”
“I have to be,” I say. “One of us has to start.”
He lets out a breath that sounds like surrender. “You always do that.”
“What?”
“Talk like a song you already know the ending to.”
“Maybe I just believe in bridges,” I say, and he shakes his head, smiling faintly despite himself.
For a moment, we just stand here, close enough that our shoulders touch, watching Vegas pulse through the window. Down below, people stumble in and out of love every five minutes. Up here, we’ve already gone too far.
He turns to me again, voice quieter now. “I want this to be real,” he says. “Even if it has to stay hidden. I want tonight to feel like… proof.”
