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“I need to tell you something.”
He didn’t move. No distance anywhere in him, nothing in the room competing for the part of him currently pointed at her.
“That sounds ominous.”
“It’s not ominous. It’s the opposite of ominous. I need you to not interrupt with commentary, though, because I’ve been rehearsing this since roughly the third floor and I will absolutely lose my nerve if you make it a whole conversation.”
“Understood. I’ll wait for my cue, patiently.”
“You’re already talking.”
“I said one sentence. I’m allowing myself exactly one before full compliance begins, starting now.”
She huffed a sound that was almost a laugh despite the nerves currently sitting in her chest like an unwelcome houseguest, and pressed forward before she lost the thread altogether.
“I’ve been keeping the distance on purpose.” She said it plainly, no cushioning. “Because I’m good at it. Because it’s safe. Because I have a thoroughly well-documented case file on what happens when I let people in, and the file doesn’t have a happy ending anywhere in it.”
She held his gaze. “I’m telling you that so you understand what I’m about to say isn’t me being reckless. I’ve thought about this far longer than two hours. I’ve thought about it since roughly the scaffolding, if I’m being fully honest, and I’ve spent every day since then finding new and increasingly elaborate reasons not to say it out loud.”
She let the silence sit a second.
“I’m in. Whatever this is. All of it. I’m in.”
He went still. Not the composure of the boardroom, not the careful blankness he wore when he was working a room full of people who wanted things from him — something enormous, finally arriving at the one place it had been circling for weeks. She watched it happen in real time, watched centuries of careful architecture simply stop bothering to hold its own shape.
Then he moved.
It wasn’t the alley’s urgency, all teeth and adrenaline and two weeks of pretending. It wasn’t the rooftop’s easy quiet either. This was slower than both and heavier than either — chosen, deliberate, two people looking directly at what they were doing and doing it anyway, eyes open the entire way through.
He kissed her with the whole of it — every remaining hour of his existence, and every intention of spending them proving it. He carried her to the bedroom without breaking the kiss once, laid her down like a woman he’d been waiting eight hundred years to be allowed to keep, and undressed her with hands that had finally stopped performing restraint for anyone’s benefit.
“Say it again.”
“I’m in.”
“Again.”
“I’m in, Norden. I’m not going anywhere.” She framed his face in both hands, made him look at her instead of anywhere else. “You don’t have to keep asking.”
“I’ll keep asking anyway. Indefinitely.”
“That sounds exhausting for both of us.”
“I’ve made peace with it.” He kissed the corner of her mouth, slow, then her jaw, her throat, a slow map he seemed determined to memorize twice over even though he’d already committed most of it weeks ago. “Humor me tonight. I’ll find a shorter version eventually.”
“Take your time. I’m not currently in a rush anywhere.”
“Good. Neither am I.”
He settled over her, bare skin to bare skin, and held her eyes the entire way down — not performed, not managed, only the plain fact of a man who’d stopped pretending he could survive without this woman weeks ago and had simply stopped bothering to argue the point anymore. His hand settled on her hip, fingers spread wide, and stayed there, anchoring rather than restraining, holding her where he wanted her as they finally, fully joined. She arched into him, found his rhythm, matched it, gave up every last scrap of narration somewhere in the middle of it the way she always eventually did with him and no one else.
“Norden.”
“I know.” His gaze locked onto hers and stayed there, refusing to let this happen anywhere but directly in front of both of them, witnessed, chosen, entirely real. “Look at me. Stay with me.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“I know that too. I intend to keep hearing you say it regardless.”
