Adrian grinned. “There he is.”
I didn’t ask who he meant. I knew.
That was the moment I knew we’d be okay, no matter what we had to go through to get there. We would get there in the end. Because my husband was the only man I knew who would humiliate himself to get a rise out of me. Just to put a smile on my face. This dignified, educated doctor dropped his professional mask just to make sure I didn’t get stuck in my head, and I loved him for it. I always had, and I always would.
That night, we made ramen and declared it dinner. Then we curled up on the couch, bowls in hand, legs tangled lazily. My foot found his thigh under the blanket, just resting there. Not intentional, but not unintentional either.
He traced circles on my ankle, not noticing—or pretending not to. My pulse fluttered. It felt good. God, it felt good.
Not once did he check his phone or take a call that interrupted our peace. Adrian was fully present.
During the show, an ER drama where he continuously mocked the writers and actors for getting everything wrong, I caught myself watching him instead of the screen. The way he scrunched his nose at a plot twist. The way he’d nudge me with his knee when something made him laugh.
I missed this man. I missed… us. The us that wasn’t clenched with fear or walking on landmines. The easy us.
When the credits rolled, he set his bowl aside and turned toward me in that slow, testing way he had now—gentle, offering, but never assuming.
I beat him to it. I leaned in and kissed him. He smiled intoit, his hands coming up to cradle my jaw. Heat sparked, my pulse spiked.
I pushed him back onto the couch cushions, straddling him properly. His hands tightened on my waist. Adrian wasn’t gripping or claiming; he just held me there like he was grateful for the contact.
His breath snagged, matching mine. He pulled back an inch. “Good?”
I brushed my nose against his. “Better than good.”
His smile was the soft kind that made my heart ache.
Adrian hitched his hands under my ass and carried me to our bedroom, as if he had all the time in the world to lavish on me, and he was looking forward to it as much as I was.
The flash hit me later—sharp,uninvited, interrupting my dreams. A flicker of the reel that played in my unconsciousness in the hospital, when I'd straddled two worlds.
But this time… it was different.
The image dulled. The edges blunted. Instead of dragging me under, it skimmed through my mind and dissolved, washed out by ramen and laughter and Adrian’s thumb on my ankle and the kiss that still hummed on my lips.
The past retreated. Not defeated. Just… displaced.
Jolting awake, I exhaled long and slow, settling beside him. He pulled the blanket over us, arm curling around me automatically.I tucked my hand under his shirt, feeling the warmth of his stomach.
He laced our fingers together beneath the fabric.
A quiet thought bloomed in my chest, tender and terrifying:We’re finding our way back.Not in grand gestures. Not in declarations. In the small, ordinary things that used to make up our lives.
Touch by touch.
Day by day.
I didn’t feel like a man trying to rebuild a life.
I felt like someone already living one.
I hadn’t plannedon saying it. Not today. Not out loud.
But the morning felt more relaxed than it had in months—my chest a little looser, my hands a little less jittery—and Adrian was humming off-key while searching for his shoes, and suddenly the words pressed up behind my teeth with a kind of reckless honesty.
“I think I’m ready to go back to work.”
He froze, one sneaker half-on, heel crushed under his foot.
