Elena didn't sleep that night.
Not for lack of exhaustion—her body had folded into her comforter like muscle memory—but her mind wouldn't settle. It paced in circles, replaying the sound of Alexander's voice, the way his eyes settled on hers when he invited her out, like he wasn't asking out of obligation or politeness.
He wanted her there.
That alone was... startling.
Not in a bad way.
Just—real.
She turned onto her side in bed, the warmth of her sheets at odds with the quiet ache blooming somewhere behind her ribs. Not pain. Not confusion. Just a kind of tightness she hadn't learned to name yet.
Elena had always been the one to take the lead.
In friendships, relationships, even casual hookups. She understood people quickly—read their cues, met them where they were. If they didn't know what they wanted, she filled in the blanks for them.
But Alexander didn't ask her to guess.
He just showed up.
And tonight, for the first time... he asked her to show up, too.
It should've felt like pressure.
But it didn't.
It felt like breathing.
Like a corner of the world that let her be quiet without being invisible.
She still remembered the way he had looked at her after the garage. Not with expectation. Not even curiosity.
But with a strange kind of peace.
Like she had belonged there, somehow.
In his world.
In his passenger seat.
In his quiet.
And that was what lingered now. More than the joyride. More than the fries she'd stolen from his plate. More than even his voice on the phone.
It was the ease.
The weightless, unspoken permission to just exist beside him.
And it was terrifyingly seductive.
Her hand reached for the chain around her neck, fingers brushing the pendant her parents had left her. She always held it when she was thinking too hard—when her emotions needed an anchor.
Alexander had done nothing grand.
No romantic lines. No big gestures.
But still… something had shifted.
And she wasn't sure what to do with that.
She got up early the next morning, unable to lay still any longer. The air was crisp through her dorm window, sunlight pushing past the blinds like it was trying to coax her into motion.
She thought about texting him.
Not to flirt.
Just to say thank you.
For the lunch. The ride. The ease.
But the words felt too small.
So she didn't.
In ballet rehearsal later that afternoon, she moved through her routine on autopilot. Her form was fine. Better than fine, actually. But her head wasn't in it.
Alexander's voice echoed in her memory.
"You're here, aren't you?"
She'd laughed when he said it—brushed it off like a joke.
But now?
Now it looped in her head like a low drumbeat.
She sat on the studio floor during water break, watching the sunlight play across the mirrors, and let herself think honestly.
Alexander wasn't just being kind.
He was choosing her—in his own quiet way. Again and again.
And it wasn't loud.
It wasn't flirtatious.
But it was real.
Intentional.
And something about that made her breath catch.
Because for all her experience—every boy she'd kissed, every person who'd wanted pieces of her—this felt unfamiliar.
Not being wanted.
Being seen.
She pulled her knees to her chest and rested her chin on them, eyes still on the reflection across the floor.
She thought about his hands on the steering wheel, the way he absentmindedly tapped to the beat of the music. The way his voice dipped when he was being sincere. The scar on his brow. The callouses on his fingers.
And how none of that scared her.
How it only made her want to know more.
Not just about his past.
But about the way he felt things.
She wanted to know what kept him up at night.
What he dreamed about when no one was watching.
What he thought of when she smiled without meaning to.
Maybe it was too soon.
Maybe she was overthinking it.
But somewhere inside her, something had clicked into place.
Something that whispered:
Don't let this go.
She wasn't in love.
Not yet.
But she was starting to feel something that felt like home.
And for the first time in a long time—
She wanted to walk toward it, not away.