Amara let out a sleepy, melodic huff of a laugh. "I'm not going to the hospital, Julian. I'm perfectly fine. Better than fine."
He was quiet for a long moment, his breathing deepening as he relaxed into the mattress. "I've spent so much time wanting you, Amara. Years of imagining what it would be like to actually have you. But I never imagined this part."
"Which part?" she asked, turning slightly in his arms to look at him in the dim light.
"The quiet," he said, his eyes searching hers with a raw, unshielded honesty. "The part where I don't have to prove anything. Where I can just... be. With you."
He reached out, his fingers tangling with hers, their wedding bands clicking softly in the dark. The holding back from the morning was a distant memory now, replaced by a steady, domestic gravity that felt far more permanent than the fire of the hallway.
