The moment was so intimate. Ben let go of my hands suddenly and then grabbed my face, looked into my eyes and came. I watched, transfixed, as his eyes seemed to cloud over for a few moments, before returning to normal. When it was over, we didn’t move. We stayed like that, our noses touching, our breath rushing in and out of each other’s mouths and still staring into each other’s eyes.
When our breaths had finally slowed enough, Ben finally spoke.
“Sera,” he said, “you do know what this means, don’t you?” He wiped some sticky strands of hair off my face.
I looked up at him and shook my head.
“You’re mine now. Officially. You belong to me until the day we’re both old and ugly and wrinkly and using walkers.” He smiled.
“That sounds slightly creepy,” I said, smiling up at him.
“I can be a bit of a creepy guy.”
“Well, you did stalk me,” I said, running my fingers through his wet hair.
“Hey, I didn’t stalk you. I wanted to talk to you all those times, I really did. But every time I tried I just . . . .” He shrugged, looking coy, then rolled us both over so that he was on his back and I was sitting on top of him. “I was shy. I chickened out,” he finally said.
“I can’t imagine you being shy for one second.”
“What can I say? You have that effect on me, Sera.”
My stomach filled with butterflies at the thought of him sitting shyly in the corner trying to pluck up the courage to talk to me.
“I have another confession to make, Sera.”
“Mmmmm?” I asked slightly wearily.
“Once I knew your name, I went looking for you on Facebook.”
“Really?”
He nodded again, looking sheepish. “I thought about sending you a friend request. But I didn’t.”
I smiled down at him. “Well, I would have turned it down anyway. I don’t accept friend requests from strangers. Especially creepy ones.”
He shook his head at me. “Not creepy. Just in love. From the first moment I saw you laughing, I had to know you.”
I felt the smile on my face getting bigger. “So moving into this building, the job . . . that was a total coincidence?”
Ben chuckled, “That, my dear Sera, was the cunning hand of fate just confirming what I already knew.”
“And what did you know, Ben?”
“That we were meant to be together. That somehow, after that night in the car, I would find you again.”
I felt my face go warm from the rush of emotions that swept through me.
“So I kept my promise. Are you going to keep yours?” he asked, taking my hands in his.
“What promise?”
“I still don’t know you. Not really.” He lifted one of my hands to his mouth and planted a soft kiss on the tip of one of my fingers.
“The whole truth,” he said in a soft coaxing voice.
“Okay. But can we have pancakes and coffee first?”
Ben smiled up at me and nodded. He eased me off him and climbed out of bed, returning with two large, warm fluffy robes from his closet. “I stole these from the hotel, in case you recognize them.”
