Julian held her the way he had been wanting to hold her since the hallway, since the moment he had blown her that kiss and walked out the front door of the Pedro mansion and gotten into a car and driven away from her, which had been the correct thing to do and had felt, every mile of it, like the wrong thing.
He held her with the full and unguarded weight of everything the day had required them not to show each other, and she held him back with the same weight, and for a long moment neither of them said anything because the holding was already saying it.
The water moved below them.
The city was behind them, doing its city things, running its tickers, constructing its narratives. Out here, it was only the sound of the sea and the particular quality of the air and the two of them at the railing, present to each other in the way they had not been permitted to be present all day.
He pulled back enough to look at her face.
He kissed her.
