I stole her fork and took a bite. "We're taking things slow."
"Slow." She raised an eyebrow. "Is that why you look like that?"
"Like what?"
"Like someone just kissed you very thoroughly."
I handed back the fork. "Maybe."
Naomi snorted. We passed the fork back and forth in comfortable silence. “Just don't let him sweep you off your feet so fast you forget to check where you're landing."
"That's very philosophical for midnight pasta."
"I contain multitudes." She tossed the container in the sink. "I'm going to bed. Try not to stay up all night replaying the kiss."
I grinned at her. "Goodnight, Naomi."
"Goodnight." She paused at the doorway. "For the record, I've never seen you like this. It's weird. But maybe good weird."
She disappeared upstairs before I could respond.
I sat alone in the kitchen for a long time, touching the bracelet on my wrist, thinking about proposals and the way he'd laughed against my lips like I was something precious.
5ISABELLE
Femi was backin my life.
I lay in the darkness of my New York apartment, listening to him breathe beside me. Steady. Peaceful. The sleep of a man with no doubts, no second-guessing.
Two months ago, he was a ghost I'd spent eight years outrunning. Now he was here, warm and solid, his arm draped across my waist like it belonged there.
My body had made the decision before my mind could catch up. Every time he walked into a room, my pulse quickened traitorously. Every time he touched me, my skin remembered things I'd tried to forget. We fit together the same way we always had—easy, natural, like sliding back into a language I'd never quite forgotten how to speak.
But something nagged at me. A whisper of doubt I couldn't silence.
Yes, we'd gone our separate ways because he wanted a wife and I had a career to build. Yes, we'd been compatible back then. But that was eight years ago. I'd changed. I wasn't the girl who'd run away from a proposal in a Swiss garden.
I was a woman now. Sure of myself. Confident. Independent in ways I hadn't known I could be.
What if he'd changed too? What if our new selves didn't fit the way our old selves had?
I turned my head on the pillow and studied his face in the dim light. The strong line of his jaw. The slight furrow between his brows, even in sleep. The way his lips parted slightly with each exhale.
"You're staring at me again."
I jumped. His eyes were still closed, but a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
"I wasn't staring. I was just... struggling to sleep."
He reached out and pulled me closer until my head rested against his chest, my ear pressed to the steady drum of his heartbeat. His lips found the curve of my neck, pressing a slow, deliberate kiss there that made my breath hitch.
"I'm glad we're doing this," he murmured. "Trying again. I never stopped thinking about you, Issy. Not once in eight years." His arms tightened around me. "I can't wait to see what the future holds for us."
I didn't say anything. Couldn't find words that felt true.
"Our paths crossed at exactly the right time," he continued, his voice warm with certainty. "Both of us are successful and ready. We’re finally mature enough to make this work. It couldn't be more perfect."
He held me. I let myself be held, even as something in my chest tightened.
