My hand floated absently to my wrist, flexing it just a little. It was still stiff. Still weak. Still healing.
But maybe I was, too.
When I looked back at Braden, he was already watching me like he knew exactly where I’d gone.
My vision blurred. “You did all this for me?”
His mouth tipped at one corner. “You only turn thirty once, birthday girl.”
That did it.
A tear slipped free, and I laughed as I swiped it away. “You are making it really hard to keep pretending this is casual.”
His grin widened, but there was something deeper in his eyes when he said, “Yeah. I’m kind of done pretending.”
My heart stalled. Once again I opened my mouth to say something but nothing came.
Braden’s hand traveled up, caressing my arm and neck along the way to frame my face. His eyes searched mine. “Nothing about you and me is casual, Em.”
I leaned into his touch with my heart beating out of my chest. “What about our contracts?”
Braden let out a long, pained sigh. “I don’t know. Not yet. I guess for now we still need to keep things under wraps, but… I don’t want to act like this isn’t something. You make me feel alive,” he said, covering my chest with his hand, right over my thumping heart. “You… fuck, Em, you make me feel like life is worth living, like it’s not just something to survive. I never thought I’d feel that way.”
I leaned forward, pressing my forehead to his. “You make me feel safe. I never thought I’d ever find that. I thought I was meant to live in the unsteady.”
“You shook up my life, and I brought stillness to yours,” he said with a smile, and then he tipped my chin, his lips hovering over mine. “Maybe we’re what the other has been missing all along.”
He kissed me, his lips firm and soft, his body warm and all-encompassing as he wrapped me in his arms. I inhaled that kiss, inhaledhim, inhaled the possibility that he could be staying, that this didn’t have to end.
When I wrapped my arms around his neck to deepen the kiss, Braden laughed, peeling me off reluctantly. “Okay, okay, before we get distracted... I think you should dance.”
“Now?”
He nodded, another quick kiss planted to my lips as he backed up and fished his phone out of his pocket. “Right now. I had the owner hook my phone up to their Bluetooth system. I don’t know what you’ll think about this song, but...” He swallowed, his eyes finding mine. “I think of you every time I hear it, and I’d love to see you dance to it. If you’re up to it.”
I held up my injured hand. “I don’t know how much I’ll be able to do with this.”
“I think you might be surprised.”
He said it with a soft smile, and then his thumb dropped to his phone screen, and a slow, beat-heavy melody began to play.
I recognized it instantly.
“Stay With Me” by Sam Smith.
A laugh caught in my throat, soft and disbelieving.
“Really?” I asked, but it was with a playful smile.
Braden’s shoulders lifted. “Too on the nose?”
“A little.”
He grinned. “I stand by it.”
The first few notes poured through the studio, rich and aching and slow enough to settle under my skin before I’d even fully taken my place in the center of the floor.
I looked at Braden one more time, my heart already too full, and then I turned away from him and let my eyes fall shut.
