“You’re messing with me.”
I shrug, which only proves his point.
He lunges.
I yelp and dart around the island, laughing so hard I almost collide with a box markedBATHROOM. He catches me before I make it more than two steps down the hall, hooking an arm around my waist and pulling me back against his chest.
“Got you,” he says into my neck.
“You cheated.”
“I’m six-three and play professional hockey. None of this counts as cheating.”
“It absolutely counts as cheating.”
His mouth brushes the spot below my ear. “You moved in with me anyway.”
The words send a warm little thrill through me, still new enough that my chest catches on them.
I turn in his arms and loop mine around his neck. “Yeah,” I murmur.
“Yeah,” he echoes, like he likes the sound of it as much as I do.
For a second, everything else falls away—the boxes, the unpacking, the city outside the windows, the distance we’ve spent the last year learning to bridge between my final semesters and his road schedule and the reality of building a life in overlapping pieces.
It’s just him and me in the middle ofourapartment.
There’s something about that word that keeps getting me.
Our.
It used to be such a dangerous thing to want.
Not him, exactly. Him, I wanted from the beginning, even when I shouldn’t have, even when it felt impossible, even when I still thought wanting anything that badly might ruin me.
But this part?
The steady part.
The ordinary part.
The part where love stops being a secret or a fear or a question and starts becoming a life.
That used to feel impossible too.
And now I’m standing in the middle of it.
Grayson brushes a strand of hair away from my face. “What are you thinking about?”
I lean into his hand. “How weird it is that this is real.”
His expression softens. “I know.”
“You do?”
He huffs a quiet laugh. “Harlow, I still come home from road trips and have a half-second where I’m surprised your face is on my lock screen and your mug is in my cabinet and half my closet smells like you.” His thumb drifts across my cheekbone. “I know exactly how weird it is.”
The smile that pulls at my mouth feels almost helpless.
