Luca's POV
She pulled back first.
Not away. Just back. Enough to look at me. Her hands still in my jacket, my hands still on her face, the distance between us the length of a breath.
She looked at me the way she looked at things she was deciding about.
I let her look.
"Hi," she said.
"Hi."
"That was—"
"Yes," I said.
She laughed. Small and real and slightly undone. I felt it move through me the specific way her laugh always moved through me. "I didn't finish."
"You didn't have to."
"Stop doing that."
"No."
She looked at me. The warmth at full volume. No management. No careful distance. Just her face in my hands in the lamplight and the specific expression she wore when she'd stopped deciding and simply arrived somewhere.
I wanted to memorize this exact version of her.
The sli
