I take a breath. Force my hands to uncurl. Make myself focus on her steady breathing instead of the violence churning in my chest.
She's here. She's safe. She's sleeping peacefully for the first time since she arrived.
And she's not going back to him.
I'll make sure of it. Not by interfering. Not by making demands or ultimatums or declarations she's not ready to hear.
But by being here. By being the alternative. By showing her what it looks like when someone sees all of her—the brilliant and the broken and everything in between—and stays anyway.
I've thought about touching her again. Dreamed about it. Woken up hard and aching from memories and fantasies that blur together.
But none of it came close to the reality of actually having her in my arms again.
And now that I know what it feels like? Now that I've felt her skin under my hands, heard her breathing change when I touched her, seen how she looks at me when she wants me?
I'm completely ruined for anyone else.
Not that I wasn't already.
I always knew why I couldn’t move on. Why I kept her birthday as my passcode and compared every woman I met to a memory I was supposed to have outgrown.
Because moving on meant accepting a future without her, and that's something I'm not ready to do.
Something I don't think I'll ever be ready to do.
Even if she walks away tomorrow and chooses to fix things with Wes. Even if she decides that what we had was just nostalgia. Even if years apart taught her nothing except that leaving was the right choice.
I'd still wait.
I'd still hope.
I'd still be right here.
She shifts in her sleep, moving closer unconsciously, and her hand brushes against mine.
Just the slightest contact—her fingers against my knuckles—but it sends electricity up my arm.
I don't pull away.
Instead, I let my fingers curl around hers gently, carefully.
Her hand relaxes in mine, and even in sleep, she moves closer, seeking warmth or comfort or just the reassurance that she's not alone.
I guess sometimes logic doesn't understand fate.
There's no logical reason why we should still fit together after all these years apart. No rational explanation for why her presence in my life feels more right than anything else ever has. No way to make sense of the fact that two weeks ago I was fine—functional, focused, building something meaningful—and now I'm lying in her bed knowing that if she leaves again, it might actually fucking destroy me this time.
But fate doesn't care about logic.
And what we have—what we've always had—is inevitable.
Tomorrow, there will be consequences to navigate.
She'll wake up and remember what she said. Remember what almost happened. Remember that she's still technically promised to someone else, even if that promise has been broken from his end.
Tomorrow, we'll have to talk about what this means. About what comes next. About whether we're brave enough to try again or foolish enough to think it could work when it didn't before.
But right now, I'm just going to lie here and hold her hand in the dark and pretend that this—her sleeping peacefully beside me, her fingers laced with mine, her breathing steady and sure—is enough.
