He walked her backward toward the bed, his mouth never leaving hers.
When the backs of her knees hit the mattress, he laid her down carefully and stretched out beside her, propped on one arm, looking at her face.
"Hi," she said softly.
"Hi." The word felt strange and right simultaneously.
He traced her features with one finger—her brow, her nose, the curve of her lips, her jaw.
"Tell me something," he said.
"What?"
"Anything. Something I don't know about you."
Her expression shifted with surprise, then something warmer. "I was terrified of dogs until I was sixteen. A neighbor's dog bit me when I was small. I had a scar on my ankle for years."
"And now you have the most dangerous dog in Mumbai eating from your hand."
"Boo Berry isn't dangerous. He's dramatic."
"He tore a man's arm out last year."
"That was a professional context. We don't discuss it." She smiled, and it reached all the way to her eyes. "Your turn. Tell me something."
He thought about deflecting. About keeping the wall. Then he thought about her voice reading to him in his office, about what it had cost her to trust him with her words.
"I've slept better this past week than I have in years," he said. "Since we started—" He paused. "Since I stopped leaving after."
Her expression went very still, then very soft. "I didn't know that."
"I didn't tell you." He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "I'm telling you now."
She turned toward him, closing the small distance between them, her hand pressing flat against his chest over his heart.
He covered her hand with his.
They stayed like that for a moment—just breathing. Just existing in the same space without performance or pretense.
Then she kissed him, and it was different from every kiss before it.
Not desperate. Not punishing. Not two people using each other for relief from loneliness.
Just two people choosing each other in the quiet dark.
He moved over her, and she welcomed him with open arms and honest eyes, and when he entered her it was slow and deep and unhurried.
"Look at me," he murmured.
She did. Eyes open. Present. Unguarded.
They moved together with the ease of people who'd finally stopped fighting the current—who'd let themselves be carried where they were always going to end up.
When she came, her eyes stayed on his. Her hands framed his face. His name left her lips like a prayer and an answer simultaneously.
He followed her with his forehead pressed to hers, breathing her name into the space between them.
Afterward, he stayed.
