God, she fit against him like the world had been designed with this moment in mind.

The weight of her head on his shoulder wasn’t heavy—it was grounding. Her hair still carried the faintest trace of their hotel shampoo, and he breathed it in like it had always belonged to him. The way her fingers slid across the inside of his wrist—barely there, just a whisper of contact—made his heart slow in the way it only did with her.

The car rumbled beneath them, soft leather seats cradling her bare legs as they tangled with his. Outside, L.A. passed in fragments—palm trees, wide boulevards, a sky that pretended it never rained. But inside, it was just them. Held in the hush that followed after everything broke and nothing needed fixing.

When she kissed his neck, he felt it like a tether.

A single, sacred point of contact that said: I’m here. I’m still choosing this. I’m still choosing you.

And when she murmured that bakery detours were the sexiest thing he’d ever done—

He laughed.

Low.
Wrecked.
So in love it bordered on reverence.

“I’d buy you twenty desserts,” he said, his voice a rasp against the soft slope of her ear. “Hell, I’d build a bakery from the ground up just to watch you lick powdered sugar off your fingers and ruin my life in public.”

She laughed too—but it was quieter. Not because she didn’t believe him. Because she did. That’s what made her breath hitch. That’s what made her fingers tighten slightly around his wrist, like she needed the anchor.

He turned slightly, enough to bring his hand to her thigh—warm, bare, still soft from his hands hours ago. He let his palm rest there, thumb drawing idle circles. Not possessive. Just present. Just hers.

His eyes dropped to her mouth—smiling now, open just a little, the tiniest hint of gloss still smudged where he’d kissed her too hard in the hallway of their hotel.

“For the record,” he murmured, letting his voice go velvet-soft, “you didn’t imagine any of it.”

Her breath caught—he felt it. A tremble, almost invisible, in the part of her that still wasn’t used to being believed.

“Not the way I looked at you.” He let his thumb drift higher, tracing the curve of her hip where the hem of her dress had risen. “Not the way you moved through Vienna like you owned it. Not the way you tasted like lemon cream and red wine and every fucking thing I’ve ever wanted.”

He leaned in then, mouth brushing her temple, voice so quiet it almost disappeared into her skin.

“And definitely not the way I love you.”

He felt her still.

Just for a second.

Then melt.

Melt into his chest. Into his hand. Into the version of herself that didn’t have to shrink to be held.

“I don’t need you palatable,” he said, the words low and raw and truer than anything he’d ever known. “I need you full.”

A beat.

“You. Angry. Loud. Soft. Glowing. Wrecked. Starving. Satisfied. All of it.”

His forehead rested against hers now. The bakery sign was coming into view through the tinted window. He didn’t care. Could’ve driven past it a hundred times if it meant she’d stay right here.

“You were never too much,” he whispered. “They were never enough.”

And when she looked at him—really looked, eyes still damp but lit with something steadier now—he saw it:

That she believed him.

At least for today.

And tomorrow?

He’d keep saying it.

Every day.
Every way.
Until her bones remembered what the world had tried to make her forget:

That she was already holy. Already whole. Already his.