ADAM
She stopped.
Not abruptly, not startled—but with a measured stillness that made the night lean closer, as if the world itself had paused to watch what would happen next.
I halted too, my grip tightening unconsciously around her hand.
For a breath, I simply stared at her.
At the angle of her face as she turned slightly toward me. At the way moonlight softened the sharpness of her cheekbones.
At her hair—dark, glossy, falling in a way that didn't quite sit right in my mind, as though some instinct deep inside me was whispering that this wasn't its true shade.
Her eyes troubled me more. Too vivid. Too deliberate. As if she'd chosen them rather than been born with them.
And yet none of that mattered. Because the feelings didn't stop.
They hadn't stopped since the moment I'd been waiting in her living room, restless, irritated with myself, when she had walked in wearing that casual confidence like a second skin.
