For a moment, the world stopped.
Everything else, the noise, the pressure, the watching audience, all of it fell away until there was nothing left but the two of them. The kiss lingered longer than either of them had planned, long enough for their breaths to sync, long enough for something unspoken to take root.
And when they finally pulled apart, it wasn't abrupt, it was slow, reluctant even. Their foreheads met instinctively, resting together as their breaths came uneven, rising and falling in sync. For a second, neither of them opened their eyes. They just stayed there, suspended in the quiet they had somehow carved out for themselves.
Then, gradually, they pulled away, but something had shifted, something neither of them had expected.
