“I’m sure,” he said. “I’ve got a feeling. You and me, we’re those kind of people.”

Epilogue

Epilogue

Two years later

Nora made it onto the balcony first.

She hadn’t been the one to wake first, not today, not with all the restless, nervous energy Will had been carrying with him all week. He first stirred at two, and then three, and then three thirty, each time reaching immediately for his phone, checking the time and holding back a groan of frustration before turning over again, seeking Nora’s warm, soft skin with his hands, pressing his body back against her so he could doze again. She slept on soundly, tired from a couple of late nights this past week, work on site redesign for one of the first major clients she’d taken on as a freelancer.

Like clockwork, though, she started to stir around four, her body waking slowly, little murmurs of wakefulness that Will thought were the best alarm clock in the whole world. When she turned toward him, pressing her lips against his bare chest and stroking her soft fingers along his stomach, all the restless energy that had been keeping him awake transformed, his body turning hard and hungry for her in the way it always did. He dipped his head, nuzzling at her neck, listening as those waking noises turned into wanting noises, Nora’s hands finding him with more focused attention to all the places he liked to be touched best.

When he pulled her over him, she came easily, smoothly, like they’d done this—or some version of this—hundreds of mornings, and after two years he liked to think they had, though he supposed he hadn’t made a habit of counting. But even with the earned familiarity they had with each other’s bodies; even though he knew she would start in this position slow, sliding down his length with delicious, torturous control, and end it fast, rubbing herself against him as he gripped her hips roughly, it still always felt like a first. When she came around him, when he let himself go inside her, he would always feel it like new; he would always tell her he loved her, like he’d wanted to that very first time, back when they were both still hiding their feelings.

“I love you, too,” she breathed, collapsing against his chest, and then she said it again, the way he always wanted her to. He tucked his hand beneath her hair, up to where her hairline met her nape, and relished the dampness there, a telling tale of her pleasure.