She’s quiet for another second.
Then: “Hi.”
“You already said that.”
“I know.” The corner of her mouth against my chest. “I’m saying it again.”
I put my hand in her hair. She lets me.
We lie there.
The light keeps changing. Gold going to white going to the specific clear quality of a Florida morning that has no interest in being subtle about anything. Her breathing evens out again — not asleep, just present. Her hand moves on my chest. Slow. Like she’s tracing something.
“What are you doing,” I say.
“Memorizing,” she says.
I don’t say anything.
She keeps going. The line of my collarbone. Down to my ribs. Back up. Slow and deliberate and completely unhurried.
“Nova.”
“Hm.”
“You’re going to be the death of me.”
“You’re fine.”
“I’m really not.”
She laughs. Low. Into my chest. The sound of it does something to me I am choosing not to examine right now.
Her hand stills.
“Jax.”
“Yeah.”
“I love you.”
Not wrecked the way she said it last night. Not in the middle of something, heat-loud and desperate. Just steady. Morning-certain. Like she woke up knowing it and decided to put it down somewhere instead of carrying it.
I stop breathing for a second.
Then I pull her up. Not fast. Not dramatic. Just my arm under her shoulder, rolling her toward me until we’re face to face on the pillow. Her hair everywhere. Her eyes on mine. The morning light doing what it does to her skin.
I get my hand on her jaw, my thumb tracing the line of her cheekbone the way I’ve wanted to do since four this morning, when she was asleep beside me and I was running the accounting in the dark and everything kept coming out the same.
“I love you too,” I say.
Close. Quiet. Just for her.
Something moves through her face — not surprise, nothing like surprise, she knew — but something. The held-breath quality of a thing finally landing where it was always going to land.
She puts her hand flat on my chest. Over my heart. Same place she put it in her sleep.
“Yeah,” she says softly. “Okay.”