And so they stayed like that, close, unhurried, wrapped in something simple and real and entirely their own, before the night, gently, carried them forward again.
Sophie didn't move at first.
She simply lay there, listening. To his breathing. To the quiet hum in the walls. To the steady rhythm beneath her cheek, the one that had become as familiar to her as her own.
Her fingers drifted again, slow and idle, tracing faint, imaginary lines across his chest. Not patterns this time. Not shapes that meant anything. Just… movement. Absent. Comforting. The kind of touch that existed only because stopping would have felt like too much effort, and because she didn't want to stop touching him at all.
Her fingertip glided, circled, paused… then started again somewhere else, as if she had all the time in the world. As if the night belonged to them and nothing else was waiting beyond the walls of this room.
