I stared at the man sitting opposite who’d just told me, without hesitation, that this wasn’t my future, but who also hadn’t put distance between us.
“Yes,” I said quietly. “We do.”
And suddenly, that was all that mattered. Certainly not Manchester, the meeting, or whatever happened after it, but this fragile bubble of time that still belonged to us, that felt more real than anything that came next.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Kieran
Time didn’t slow down,or even stretch to accommodate us. If anything, it did the opposite. It slipped, quietly and relentlessly, like sand through an hourglass.
And we both felt it.
Mornings had their own rhythm. Coffee, light through the windows, the city waking somewhere beyond the glass. Stefan moved through it with the same quiet precision, but there were small changes. More often than not, his hand found its resting place at the back of my neck, his thumb moving gently over the skin.
In the afternoons, he worked, and I stayed. At first, I felt I was intruding, but by Thursday, it felt natural. I sat at the piano more than anywhere else. The notes came easier, not because I was trying harder, but because I stopped forcing the structure and simply played. It wasn’t quite a sonata, but it was getting there. Stefan would sit on the couch and listen, never interrupting. And when I was done, he’d say “Again.”
So I did, every time.
In the evenings, he took me to the Opera, the cinema, a friend’s reading. And once we went to someone’s apartment, a space that required trust. He never assumed, never pushed, and every step was mine to take. He simply made it all possible. And all through the evening he would look at me, the same question on his lips.
“Are you still with me?”
“Yes,” I said, and I meant it, more than I’d meant anything in a long time.
And then there were the in-between moments.
Those were the ones that caught me off guard. The ordinariness of shopping for food, arguing about what to cook, music playing in the background while we moved around each other without thinking about it.
At some point, I stopped asking where things were, because I knew. I stopped wondering if I should stay and just did.
We didn’t talk about it. We didn’t need to.
We still went out, but it wasn’t about seeing Berlin anymore—it was about being in it, with him. We walked without purpose, sat in cafés for what seemed like days, and let conversations drift. At one point, I realised I hadn’t checked the time in hours.
That felt right.
Stefan
Time became something I measured differently. Not in days, but in moments.
The way he moved through the apartment. The way he no longer asked where things were. He stopped hesitating before crossing a room to kiss me.
They were small, unconscious shifts, and they mattered.
He stayed while I worked, and while I expected it to feel like a disruption initially, it didn’t. I became aware of him in ways that had nothing to do with distraction. The sound of the piano had me pausing more than once, listening. He played more as the days passed, becoming less self-conscious, more direct. His music reflected that. I stood in the doorway or sat on the couch, listening. He knew I was there, and he didn’t stop.
That was trust.
There were some moments I noticed more than others. The way he looked at me when he thought I wasn’t paying attention. How he leaned into contact without checking whether it was welcome.
I didn’t redefine our boundaries. I didn’t remind him of his imminent departure. Because he didn’t want to think about that, and neither did I.
And then we spent an entire day in bed, not something I’d ever done before. For me, time was rarely without intent, and yet I loved every minute of it.
He spent every night in my arms.
I was constantly aware of the end. I could feel its approach. Each day didn’t feel like time gained, but time reduced. That was the reality of it.