For the first time since he'd returned to Sheraton Beach, she stopped wondering whether getting close to him was a mistake.
And started wondering what would happen if she didn't.
“What?” he asked curiously.
Johanna traced one finger slowly around the stem of her wineglass. “I missed this.”
Something quiet moved across Blaze’s face then.
Relief maybe, or gratitude.
“Yeah,” he admitted softly. “Me too.”
The honesty from him still affected her every single time.
There was nothing calculated about Blaze when it came to his feelings. He never hid them behind games or ego or emotional distance. Loving her used to come as naturally to him as breathing. The frightening part was realizing how badly she missed being loved that openly.
Later, they bundled up and strolled along the harbor beneathstrings of lights while the city glowed around them in reflections across dark water. The wind picked up sharply near the docks, and Johanna shivered lightly before Blaze pulled her closer against his side without hesitation.
The movement felt protective. Like her place had always been there beside him.
Johanna tipped her head back to look at him. “You know what your problem is?”
Blaze grinned immediately. “Are you obsessed with diagnosing me?”
“You got jokes.” She laughed then sobered. “Seriously. You make everything feel…” She hesitated briefly before finally admitting the truth. “Easy.”
His expression softened almost instantly. “Maybe because loving you never felt hard.”
The words settled deep inside her chest.
Because that was the thing. Even after heartbreak, years apart, and all the emotional damage he caused her, being with Blaze still felt frighteningly natural. It was as if her body and heart both remembered him long before her mind caught up.
Blaze stopped walking then turned Johanna gently toward him beneath the glow of harbor lights. The city moved around them in soft noise and distant laughter while water rolled dark beside the docks. But suddenly none of it mattered.
Not with the way he was looking at her.
His eyes shone with awareness and certainty that felt sincere. Then he brushed one curl away from her face before his fingers settled gently along her jaw.
“You know what?” he murmured.
Johanna’s pulse fluttered softly. “What?”
“Every version of my future I ever pictured still somehow had you in it.”
Emotion tightened painfully in Johanna’s chest while Blazestudied her face like he already understood exactly what those words had done to her. Then he kissed her.
Gentle at first, then deeper.
Johanna melted against him, her hands sliding into his jacket while Blaze pulled her closer. His body heat blocked out the cold wind while his mouth moved against hers with the kind of familiarity that only came from loving someone before.
Blaze hadn’t spent five months back in Sheraton Beach avoiding every other woman in town just to walk away now.
And standing there in Baltimore wrapped in Blaze's arms, Johanna realized she was no longer trying to stop herself from falling.
The truth was, she already had.
Her hands tightened inside his jacket as she kissed him back without hesitation, giving him every piece of the response she'd spent weeks trying to hold back.
