“Hey,” I murmur.
“Hey,” she whispers back, voice still thick with sleep. “You’re awake early.”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“Thinking about yesterday?”
“Thinking about you.”
Her smile widens. “That’s dangerous.”
“For whom?”
“Probably me,” she says, sitting up a little, pulling the blanket with her. “You make it too easy to forget why I told you I wanted to go slow.”
“I didn’t forget,” I breathe. “I’m just enjoying the wait.”
Her brow creases, caught between laughter and disbelief. “No one enjoys waiting.”
“I do,” I tell her. “When I know the rewards waiting for me at the end.”
That earns me a soft laugh. Maya gathers her courage and brings up her whispered confession. “Last night, when I said I was falling for you…”
I feel a twist in my chest that’s part hope, part fear.
“I meant it,” she says. “Every word. I just…need time to trust everything that goes along with falling in love. For so long, I was focused on believing I was ‘in love’ with the wrong person. I need to appreciate what it means to know I am with the right one.”
“You already know,” I whisper. “You just have to trust in us.”
She smiles faintly. “You always say the best things.”
“No,” I murmur. “Just the truth.”
She leans forward. Her hands cup my jaw, and for a heartbeat we just breathe the same air. No noise, no crowd, no ex-boyfriend’s shadow stretching between us — just this.
When she kisses me, it’s not hungry or hurried. It’s gentle, deliberate. The kind of kiss that doesn’t demand anything except honesty.
It’s over too soon. She sits back, her cheeks flushed. “You really are dangerous, Troy.”
“How so?”
“You make patience look sexy.”
“Sorry, not sorry?”
She laughs before lying back down, curling into me again. Her head rests on my chest; her hand lies over my heart. “This feels perfect,” she murmurs.
I brush a kiss into her hair. “Then I guess we’re both in agreement.”
She hums her concurrence, her fingers tracing over my ribs in slow, absent movements. The city outside keeps moving, traffic stirring, rain tapering into mist. But in here, time slows to something only our hearts know the rhythm to.
Her voice is barely a whisper when she pleads, “Don’t stop making it feel like this.”
“I won’t,” I promise. “Even if you’re afraid and try to run from me.”
She smiles against my chest. “You really are in this for the long haul, aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Because for the first time in my life, I’m not playing because love isn’t a game.”
