He didn’t back away, like he knew he should. Like he’d done before, in the hot tub or the bookstore. This time, he wanted to feel her soft, warm weight against him. This time, he didn’t want to stop it. “Apology accepted.” They studied each other in the near dark.

Jaya inched closer, just a breath away from him now. Before he could process it, she had her arms wrapped around his neck and he was bending down to brush her lips with his again.

She began to hungrily deepen the kiss, her soft lips parting, inviting his tongue in, her quick, panting breaths mingling with his. Grey tightened his arms around her waist, wanting to get closer, tasting her, letting himself be lost in her.

Something buzzed between them, insistent. It stopped, then started again. Finally, Jaya pulled back. “Sorry,” she said, her voice husky, her lips slightly swollen from their kiss. “Let me just…” She pulled her cell from her coat pocket and looked at the screen. Appa flashed on the screen. Her father, calling so early? Jaya frowned a little. He must be confused about the time change.

“Do you need to get that?” Grey asked.

She looked up at him for a long moment, her eyes searching his, weighing something. Then she slid to reject the call, slipped the phone back into her pocket, and stepped back into his arms.

Grey’s heart leaped with a happiness he didn’t know was possible.

Jaya

Grey rested his forehead on hers. They stood there in the snow, letting the white flakes cover them like confetti. Jaya smiled. She felt strange, exhilarated and full of wonder and filled with helium somehow.

“You know, when I first found out you were in all my classes, I thought it was a pretty weird coincidence. I was kind of suspicious, in fact.”

Jaya’s pulse pounded. “Really?” she asked, gazing into his eyes.

“Yeah, but now… now I think it was fate. If it was a sign, it was a sign of something really, really good.” He smiled so brilliantly, he lit up the dark.

Jaya forced herself to smile back. How could she tell him the truth about why she was in all his classes and snatch his joy away? Was it really the most terrible thing in the world if he believed that it was all a sign from the universe? She leaned in and kissed him again, soft and slow, letting her body tell him everything she couldn’t—that although she’d come here with bad intentions, she genuinely, truly cared about him now. She let her mouth tell him how much she wanted him; she let her thudding heartbeat reiterate that she would never, ever hurt him.

“So what now?” Grey asked when they broke apart, his voice barely more than a whisper. “Are we… dating?”