“I can see why.”
We talk about ordinary things at first. Uni. Training. A stupid story Lukas told that still makes her laugh. The ease surprises me, even though it shouldn’t. This is what we were always good at.
At some point, she meets my eyes, her expression serious but not closed off. “I’m not ready for everything,” she says. “But I want to keep doing this.”
I nod. “However you need it to be.”
She watches me for a beat, as if she’s checking for impatience, expectation, or pressure even. Whatever she’s looking for, she seems to find the absence of it reassuring.
“Thank you,” she says.
When lunch ends, we walk along the river together. Not touching but not apart either. Just side by side, steps matching without effort. There’s no dramatic moment. No declaration or promise of forever. But there’s laughter and smiling.
There’s connection and that feels enough for now.
EPILOGUE
ROSE
Our reconnection doesn’t crash into my life or knock the air from my lungs. It doesn’t demand anything from me. It moves slowly, deliberately, like it knows how fragile things still are, how carefully they need to be handled. Everything starts with space, with Callum not pushing. He lets the silence exist between us without trying to fill it with reassurance or apologies. He listens when I speak, even when what I’m saying is messy or unfinished or changes halfway through.
We meet for coffee first. It’s neutral ground in the daylight; it feels safe with no expectations from either or us. What was supposed to be an hour soon rolls into two, and feels almost too easy.
Then it’s the dinners that stretch longer than planned because neither of us wants to be the one to end them. We have conversations that drift from the mundane to the meaningful and back again, we’re learning how to exist together in this new version of us.
He doesn’t touch me unless I initiate it, and when he finally does, he asks.
“Is this okay?” he says the first time his fingers brush mine and he entwines our fingers to hold my hand. The question alone does something to me.
“Yes,” I answer, because it is. Because I choose it.
The intimacy builds like that. Not in grand declarations or sweeping gestures, but in moments stacked gently on top of each other. In the way he remembers how I take my coffee and the way he notices when I start to retreat into myself and doesn’t follow, he just stays close enough that I know he’s there.
Trust doesn’t snap back into place, but it begins to grow, slow and steady.
The night we end up back at his flat feels inevitable, but not rushed. There’s no tension humming between us like a threat, no fear that if we don’t do this now, we’ll lose the chance forever. When he closes the door behind us, he doesn’t pull me into his arms. He waits and it’s me that steps toward him instead.
Our kiss is slow. Soft and exploratory. His hands frame my face as though he’s relearning me, and he’s afraid of pressing too hard. When I deepen it, when I slide my hands into his hair, he exhales and it’s a low, shaky sound that tells me exactly how much restraint it’s taken him to get here.
When we move to the bedroom, everything is unhurried. He touches me as though I’m something precious, not something he’s afraid will slip away. There’s no desperation in him now, no edge of panic or need to prove anything. Just presence and care. When he pauses, searching my face, I realise he’s waiting for permission again.
“Please,” I whisper.
And when he finally slides inside me, it’s tender in a way that makes my chest ache. Not because it’s overwhelming, but because it’s chosen. Every second is a soft murmur between us. I feel the crescendo peak and Callum holds me tight, arms wrapped around me like a safety net as I fall over the edge into bliss. It’s not until the final shudder leaves my body that he allows himself to fall, my name a whisper on his lips as he does.
We wake tangled in sheets again, sunlight stronger now, the world firmly awakes around us. There’s no fear in me this timewhen I open my eyes. No instinct to brace myself for loss or the fear of Talia’s social media posts. They seem to have died out with the acceptance that she lost him to me.
Now there’s just a calm certainty.
Lying there, listening to his heartbeat under my cheek, I realise something with startling clarity.
Love didn’t save me.
I did.
I learned how to stand on my own, how to trust my instincts, how to sit with fear without letting it decide for me. I learned that being chosen isn’t the same as choosing, and that the second one is the only one that matters.
And now, with open eyes and steady hands, I choose him. Not because I need him. But because I want to walk forward with him. Honestly and imperfectly together.
