She reached for him instinctively.
He looked up, eyes wet, and gave a disbelieving laugh. “She’s going to be okay.”
Maya nodded, unable to speak.
He moved to the bed and kissed her then. Not her forehead. Not her cheek. Her mouth.
It was not a cautious kiss. It was not a reckless one either. It felt like the end of a restraint that had been ethical until it became impossible. His hand came up to cradle her jaw, warm and shaking. Maya held his wrist and kissed him back with everything she had been too afraid to admit. The room disappeared. The machines, the stale hospital air, the fluorescent light—all of it fell away under the simple human fact of wanting and being wanted.
When they pulled apart, Taylor kept his forehead resting lightly against hers.
“Our six months are up next week,” Maya whispered.
He closed his eyes.
Contract. Papers. Terms. The architecture of the lie that had delivered them here.
“I know,” he said.
She searched his face. “So what happens now?”
Taylor drew back just enough to look at her properly. There was no trace of his old arrogance in him then, only a steadiness she trusted more because it had been earned badly.
“Now,” he said, “I ask you for something I have no right to assume you’ll give me.”
Maya’s breath caught.
He took her hand carefully, like something breakable and powerful at once. “Marry me.”
She stared.
His mouth twitched through a kind of pained humor. “I understand the objection. So let me rephrase.” He tightened his fingers around hers. “Marry me again. For real. Not because Eric challenged me. Not because you were lonely. Not because I thought winning meant control. Marry me because somewhere in the middle of all the worst ways to begin, you became the only person I’ve ever wanted to build a life honestly with.”
Maya felt tears start again.
Taylor went on, voice low and unguarded. “You changed me in ways I didn’t even know were necessary. You made me see the city I live in. The work people do. The lies I told myself about what mattered. You stood in my kitchen and argued with me and called me out and kept going when your body was fighting you, and every day I respected you more until respect turned into something that made me afraid all the time.” He laughed shakily once. “I’m still afraid, actually. I think maybe that’s part of it.”
