He turns toward me and in the low light his expression is the most unguarded I’ve seen it —none of the easy charm, none of the grin. Just Cruz, looking at me like I’m something he’s been trying to figure out and has finally, quietly, understood.
“Can I kiss you?” he asks.
Two words I wasn’t ready for in that specific configuration. NotI want to kiss you, not a lean-in with implied question, not any of the usual machinery. Just the direct, respectful, completely certain ask.
I feel it move through me like the current I felt this afternoon, except stronger, except warmer, except I’m standing in the dark on a beach and there is no courtroom composure to hide behind.
“Yes,” I say.
He closes the distance slowly. Not hesitant. Just deliberate. And giving me every opportunity to change my mind. And when he kisses me it’s soft and certain and unhurried, one hand coming up to my jaw like I’m something worth being careful with, and it lasts only a moment before he pulls back and looks at me.
I feel seen in a way that is almost unbearable.
In a way I haven’t felt in so long I’d forgotten it was a thing that could happen.
“This is probably a mistake,” I say, because I’m me, because I cannot apparently stand in the dark on a beach and just let something be good without building the counterargument.
He looks at me —and there’s that expression, the quiet one, the one that isn’t the grin but is somehow more dangerous than the grin— and he says, “Probably. Still want to make it?”
And I kiss him this time.
Not soft. Not careful. The kind of kiss that has fourteen years of solitude behind it and a warm evening in front of it and absolutely no interest in being measured or reasonable. His hand moves from my jaw into my hair and I feel him exhale like something releasing and I think distantly, clearly, like a verdict…
Oh, this is a problem.
This is thewholeproblem.
He’s not too young or too carefree or too much or any of the things I built the case around. He’s exactly this. Present and certain and looking at me like I’m art. That is so much more dangerous than anything I prepared for.
We break apart and the ocean is loud and my heart is doing something I haven’t authorized and Cruz is looking at me with that expression still, the certain quiet one.
“Come on,” he says softly. “I’ll walk you home.”
Like it’s the most natural thing. Like none of this is a big deal when it is absolutely a big deal.
I fall into step beside him.
Our hands find each other in the dark without either of us deciding it, fingers loosely linked, and neither of us mentions it.
We don’t have to.
8
CRUZ
She kisses me first.
I want to be clear about that.
Not because it matters for any scorekeeping reason but because it matters to me specifically, because I asked and she said yes and then she decided, and Hannah Caldwell deciding something is not a small thing. I felt it in the shift of her, the way she moved toward me with intention, no hesitation, all of her committed to the moment in the way she seems to do everything.
I will think about that kiss for the rest of my life.
I already know this, standing on a dark beach with salt air in my lungs and her hand finding mine in the space between us. a loose, unannounced linking of fingers that neither of us engineers, it just happens, like tide, like something inevitable that the geography of us produces naturally.
I don’t squeeze her hand. Don’t make it a declaration. Just hold it the way it arrived, easy and present, and walk her home.
Here’s what I know about Hannah after two days and one dinner and a kiss that rearranged something fundamental in my chest.
