“That’s it,” I said.
He stayed where he was, the frame still in his hands, waiting.
I didn’t speak right away. The room had gone quiet in a way that didn’t feel empty.
“She always liked you,” I said finally.
He glanced back at me then, something softer in his expression than I was used to seeing without him covering it. He marked the wall with the pencil, measured once, then reached into the bag for hooks.
“Deion,” I said.
He paused, turning slightly.
“Yeah?”
I took a breath, not because I didn’t know what I was about to say, but because I did.
“I’ve been… managing something,” I said slowly. “Calling it other things so I didn’t have to call it what it is.”
He set the tools down carefully, giving me his full attention.
“What is it?” he asked.
I met his eyes.
“I didn’t want to lose you,” I said. “So I kept everything in a place where nothing could touch it. Including me.”
The words settled between us without needing anything added to them.
Somewhere behind us, Jill had been playing long enough to disappear into the room, her voice low andsteady, the kind of song that took its time and felt like something real.
He looked at me for a long moment, something shifting in his face that he didn’t try to hide this time.
“I’ve been right here,” he said quietly.
“I know.”
That was the first time I’d said it without adjusting it into something smaller. Deion stepped closer, just enough to close the distance that had been there for too long.
His fingers settled along my jaw, warm and steady, his thumb just beneath my ear like he already knew the place that would quiet everything else. I felt the contact travel further than it should have, down my neck and into my chest, like my body had been waiting for this exact touch and recognized it before I could.
“Nova,” he said, my name low and sure in his mouth.
“Yeah.”
I didn’t say anything else. I didn’t need to. Jill’s voice curved behind him,“He Loves Me (Lyzel in E Flat)” playing low, soft, and sure, and I felt it settle somewhere I hadn’t been letting myself look at too closely.
He closed the rest of the distance between us with a kind of patience that made it clear he wasn’t guessing, wasn’t hoping. He knew where this was going and had decided to meet me there. When his mouth found mine, it didn’t rush, didn’t press, just settled, and something deep in me answered it immediately.
There it was. This moment was not imagined and nothing to be filed away for later. It was very much as real as anything could get.
The shape of him this close, the span of his hand shifting from my jaw to the back of my neck, holding me there without pressure, just enough to keep me from pulling away even if I’d tried. I didn’t… There was no way in hell I would ever want to.
My hands found his shirt, fingers curling into the fabric like I needed something solid to anchor myself to, and he felt that, a quiet exhale slipping between us before he kissed me deeper. Still not rushed. Still not overwhelming. Just right in a way that made everything else fall out of the room. Like we had both arrived somewhere we’d been circling for years, and neither of us felt the need to move past it now that we were finally standing in it.
When I pulled back, it wasn’t far. My forehead rested against his chest, my breath uneven in a way I wasn’t interested in fixing.
“That okay?” he asked, softer this time.
