I open the door. He’s sitting on the edge of his bed in sweats and a t-shirt, his phone on the nightstand, hands between his knees. He looks up at me, his face mirroring the cautious expression he wore in the hallway this morning—careful, waiting, bracing for whatever comes next.
I lean against the doorframe. “I didn’t mean I want to leave.”
“No?”
“No, Arch. It felt like you heard something I wasn’t saying.”
He rubs the back of his neck. “I heard you say you want your own apartment, and my brain turned it into you want out. I know that’s not what you said. I just—” He exhales. “I’m working on it.”
“I want to stay, Archer. I want it more than anything. I just thought having my own place would be the adult thing to do…”
“I get that. I do.” He looks at his hands. “I just like you here. I like waking up and knowing you’re down the hall. I like hearing you in the kitchen in the morning. The idea of you being somewhere else, even if you’re here most of the time—” He shakes his head. “It scares me. That’s not your problem. It’s mine. But it scares me.”
I push off the doorframe, cross the room, and sit next to him on the bed. Our shoulders touch. He’s warm through his t-shirt, and I can feel him breathing—slow, deliberate, the way he breathes when he’s trying to stay steady.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I say. “At least not right away.”
He turns his head to look at me, his eyes tired, honest, and slightly red around the edges. I wonder if he slept last night, if he lay in this bed staring at the ceiling, replaying every word the way I did in the guest room.
“Stay tonight,” he says. “Here. With me.”
“Arch—”
“Please. I want you here, honey.”
The word hits me somewhere below my ribs. Honey. He’s never called me that before—not in all the years I’ve known him, not once. It comes out soft and unplanned, like it slipped past whatever filter he usually maintains between his brain and his mouth.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll stay.”
He exhales, and his whole body relaxes. I lean into him, and his arm wraps around me. I rest my face against his shoulderand breathe him in—laundry detergent, body wash, and beneath that, just Archer, the same way he’s always smelled.
We sit like that for a while. His hand moves up and down my arm, slow and absent, and I feel the tension from the last twenty-four hours start to drain out of me. The fight isn’t gone—we still need to talk about the apartment, about labels, about everything—but right now, in this room, it can wait.
“I’m sorry about last night,” he says into my hair.
“I know.”
“Exit strategy was a stupid thing to say.”
“It really was.”
“I panicked.”
“I know you panicked. Like a skittish polar bear.”
He laughs—low, short, real. His arm tightens around me, and I tilt my face up; he’s right there—close, warm, looking at me with an expression I could stare at for the rest of my life.
I kiss him—soft, slow, my hand on his jaw, his stubble rough under my fingers. He kisses me back, and his hand slides from my arm to my waist. I shift until I’m facing him on the bed, my knees tucked under me, and his hands find my hips and pull me closer. We’re kissing on his bed, in his room, and this is the first time we’ve been in a bed together since we were teenagers. Everything about it is different.
He’s different. His hands are sure where they used to hesitate. His mouth is deliberate where it used to search. He kisses me like he knows exactly what he’s doing, like the years between seventeen and now taught him how to slow down, how to pay attention, how to make every point of contact feel intentional.
At seventeen, he was sweet and nervous, trying so hard not to hurt me. At thirty-one, he’s unhurried and thorough; the confidence is devastating.
His mouth moves to my neck, and I tilt my head back as his hand slides under my shirt, palm flat against my stomach. The warmth of his hand on my bare skin makes me gasp. He pulls back.
“Is this okay?”
“Yeah. Don’t stop.”
