Her eyes widened.
She looked from Noah to me and back again before turning so abruptly she nearly collided with a waiter balancing a tray of champagne flutes.
I bit back a smile.
Noah followed my gaze.
A quiet laugh escaped him.
When he glanced back at me, something had shifted in his expression.
“Walk with me?” he asked softly.
I looked over beyond the glow of the reception lights, the vineyard stretching into darkness beneath a sky scattered with stars.
“Okay,” I said.
We drifted away from the marquee almost without deciding to, our steps naturally falling into the same rhythm. The music, the laughter, the clinking glasses, everything disappeared behind us until it was nothing more than a distant hum, like the party existed in a different time zone.
The moon hung low and bright above the vines, silvering the edges of everything, the rows, the gum trees, the grass, the marquee in the distance. The vineyard stretched out in long, steady lines, each row reaching into the dark like a story still being written.
We walked slowly, neither of us speaking. But it wasn’t awkward. It didn’t even feel like silence, not really. It was two people letting the noise fall away long enough to notice what was left.
At the edge of a row, he slowed and came to a stop.
The air smelled like late-summer fruit, a sweetness tucked into the breeze.
His hands slipped into his pockets, his posture loosening as though the soil itself was exhaling through him. “This,” he said, eyes still on the vines, “is the first time today I’ve felt like the ground isn’t moving under my feet.”
The admission melted something in me. He’d spent days carrying anxiety like it was stitched into his spine, retreating into himself, bristling at the smallest things, moving through the world like everything was just a little too loud.
“It’s been a big week,” I said gently.
“It has.” He paused, with a faint rueful grin. “I haven’t exactly been… easy, these last few days.”
My lips curved. “You’ve had a lot on your shoulders.”
He turned to me then, the night reflected in his eyes, calmer now, steadier. “Even when I felt all that weight… there was you.”
My heart gave a traitorous little lurch. I hadn't realised how badly I needed to hear that until he said it.
He faced me fully then, reaching out to brush a stray curl behind my ear. His fingers lingered, the touch barely a whisper but somehow enough to pull my heart upward into my throat.
“Holly,” he said, his voice low and almost nervous. “I want to see where this goes. You and me. Not rushed. Not forced. Just… us.”
My pulse fluttered with a mixture of relief and something that felt dangerously like happiness. “I want that too,” I said gently.
A small, breathless sound broke from his chest. He lifted his hand again, cupping my cheek this time, his thumb brushing justbeneath my cheekbone. It was the gentlest touch I’d ever known, full of promise rather than urgency.
He leaned in slowly, giving me every moment to step away. I didn’t. When his lips met mine, the kiss was tender and certain, the kind that seemed to gather the whole week into a single, perfect moment.
I slid my hands lightly around his waist, feeling the solidness of him, the way he leaned into me before deepening the kiss by the smallest degree. Nothing rushed. Nothing overwhelming.
Just a sense of coming home.
When we finally drew apart, we stayed close, our foreheads almost touching, our breaths mingling in the space between us.
“What happens now?” I asked, my voice carrying the faintest tremor of hope.
