I awoke to the gentle, persistent scent of coffee and the unfamiliar, solid warmth of another body pressed along my spine. For one disorienting second, I thought I was still dreaming—a pleasant, weightless dream of snow and whispered truths and a kiss that had rewired my nervous system.
Then memory returned in a warm, lurching flood. The party. The alley. The kiss that wasn’t a performance or a pact but a punctuation mark to a sentence we’d been writing for years. The way he’d held my hand as we’d slipped back inside, through the cheering, oblivious crowd, his thumb stroking my knuckles with a possessive rhythm that made my knees weak. The quiet cab ride to my apartment, our shoulders pressed together, a charged, joyful silence between us. The way he’d kissed me again at my door, slow and
