Night

The room hummed softly, the kind of quiet that only appears when everything has already been said. The window was open, letting in the slow rhythm of the night. Air drifted through the curtain, warm with the scent of rain that hadn’t yet fallen.

He lay on his side, eyes tracing the outline of her shoulder where the moonlight rested. She had turned away, pretending to sleep, but her breath was too careful, her stillness too deliberate. He knew she was listening.

“Come drift with me,” he said. His voice was low, not a plea, not quite a question. “We can leave the window open. The night is doing good work.”

Something in her softened at that. She turned over slowly, eyes meeting his, unreadable at first, then yielding. The space between them disappeared the way a tide folds back into the shore.

He touched her face as though it were a fragile idea, one he was still learning how to believe in. She caught his hand and pressed it against her chest until he could feel her heartbeat steady and certain beneath his palm.

Outside, a branch knocked gently against the glass. Inside, the air thickened with warmth and the promise of something unspoken but alive. The night continued its quiet labor, stitching the distance shut.