I woke up in a hospital room. The fluorescent lights above hummed in their sterile fixtures, casting pale shadows that drifted across the ceiling as the afternoon waned. The heart monitor beside me beeped steadily, stubbornly, like it knew someone was listening.

Nicholas sat beside my bed, quiet and still.

He sat there with one leg crossed over the other, his jacket draped neatly over the chair behind him, sleeves rolled to his forearms, hands laced together in his lap. Like he wasn’t waiting for news. Like he was waiting for me.

When I finally turned my head and met his eyes, he didn’t look away.

He didn’t blink, didn’t frown, didn’t shift like he was trying to prepare himself for the worst.

He just held my gaze, like it was the easiest thing in the world. Like he’d been waiting for this, not in dread, but in quiet certainty.

And then he spoke, his voice low but sure. “Is it mine?”

I opened my mouth, but for a second, the words stuck. They tangled in my throat, catching on all the fear and guilt and longing I hadn’t said aloud.

But when I spoke, my voice didn’t shake.

“Yes.” I said it clearly, steadily. “It’s yours.”

The faintest sound escaped him, not a gasp, not a sigh. Something deeper, something that sounded like a man catching his breath after being underwater too long.

He nodded once, not breaking eye contact.

“Good.”

He stood slowly, taking two short steps that brought him to the side of the bed. He didn’t reach for me immediately. He waited–for permission, maybe, or for me to meet him halfway.

I didn’t hesitate.

I lifted my hand, and he caught it gently between both of his.

I looked down at our hands, at the way his thumb brushed lightly across the back of mine, and something inside me cracked wide open.

“I wasn’t going to tell you,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.

He didn’t look surprised. “I figured,” he said.

“I didn’t want you to think it was a trap.” I stared at our hands. “Or that I was trying to force something on you. That night wasn’t supposed to mean anything. It was supposed to be a mistake. A one-time escape.”

He was silent for a moment, his grip on my hand tightening just slightly.

“It did mean something,” he said quietly. “You didn’t want it to. Maybe you couldn’t let it. But it did. For me, it did.”

I blinked hard against the sudden sting behind my eyes.

“Then why didn’t you say anything?” I asked, my voice thick.

Nicholas shifted closer, his knee brushing against the side of the bed.

“You left,” he said simply. “Before I could even ask your name. Before I could make sense of what the hell had just happened. You walked away like it hadn’t wrecked you at all.”

“It did,” I said. “God, it did. But I didn’t know how to stay. I didn’t know how to want anything after Daniel — not really. I thought… I thought if I let myself hope again, it would kill me.”

He let out a slow breath, a sound half between a laugh and a sigh. “You weren’t broken, Elena. You were surviving.”

I closed my eyes, but he squeezed my hand, and I opened them again.

“I thought about that night every damn day,” he said, voice low, roughened by months of unsaid things. “Every time I passed your desk and you refused to look at me. Every time you smiled at someone else but kept your head down around me. I knew. I knew you were keeping something from me. I just didn’t know what.”

Tears blurred my vision. “I was scared.”

He leaned in, lowering his forehead to rest against mine.

“So am I,” he said. “But I’m still here.”

The machine next to me kept ticking out the seconds, but it felt like the world had narrowed down to just this: the weight of his hand, the steady beat of his breathing against my skin, the terrifying, beautiful truth between us.

“I’m terrified,” I whispered.

His hand cradled the side of my face. “I’m not going anywhere.”