Amy’s POV
The moment I saw him, my heart stopped.
There he was—standing in the middle of Times Square, holding a bouquet of white daisies in one hand and a ridiculous grin on his face. His jeans were slightly wrinkled from the flight, his hair messy from the wind, and yet he looked like everything I had been missing since I boarded that train.
I didn’t care that tourists were swarming around us, that a street performer dressed as Spider-Man was dancing ten feet away, or that the lights above us blinked brighter than a disco ball. I dropped my bag right there on the pavement and ran straight into his arms.
He caught me instantly.
His arms wrapped around me, strong and familiar, lifting me slightly off the ground as I clung to him like I never wanted to let go. The scent of his cologne hit me—clean, warm, home. I buried my face in the crook of his neck, laughing through the tears that spilled down my cheeks before I even realized I was crying.
“You’re here,” I whispered, breathless.
“I told you I would be,” he said, his voice rough with emotion. “Like I could stay away.”
We didn’t waste a single second. After the hug, after the tears, after our first kiss in weeks—deep and slow and worth every heartbeat we had spent apart—we were off.
We explored New York City like the wide-eyed tourists we were.
We walked through Central Park, hand in hand, stopping to watch dogs chase frisbees and a little girl try to feed a duck half a bagel. He bought me a pretzel the size of my head and let me steal the saltier bites. He pointed out squirrels like they were rare birds, even though we had seen a hundred of them.
We shared slices of greasy, perfect pizza on a street corner at midnight. I had never tasted anything so wrong and so right at the same time. He dabbed sauce off my chin with his thumb, smiling like I was the only thing that mattered.
We stumbled into an alley in the East Village filled with spray-painted murals, and right there—beneath a wall covered in neon wings—he pulled me close and kissed me again. It was messier this time, less careful, like all the space we had held between us had finally dissolved.
By the time we reached the Brooklyn Bridge, the sky had started to turn dusky blue.
The lights of the city sparkled behind us. The wind tugged gently at my hair, and the wooden planks beneath our feet creaked as we walked side by side. I didn’t say anything for a while. I was afraid that if I spoke, the moment might crack.
But then, when he reached for my hand again and linked our fingers without even looking, I turned to him.
“I missed you,” I said softly, the words slipping out like a secret I had kept too long.
James stopped walking and looked at me, really looked at me.
“Then let’s not waste any more time,” he said.
The train ride back to my apartment felt like a dream. We didn’t talk much. We just sat close, knees touching, our heads resting against each other. Every second of silence was loud with everything we felt but didn’t need to say out loud.
When we got back to my studio apartment—small, warm, cluttered with books and pinned-up sketches—I kicked off my shoes and closed the door behind us. I turned to look at him, unsure for a moment of what would happen next.
But the look in his eyes told me everything.
We didn’t rush.
We moved slowly, deliberately, with the kind of care that only comes after surviving storms together. His hands cupped my face as he kissed me, slow at first, and then deeper, fuller. My fingers curled around the collar of his shirt, pulling him closer, needing him close in a way that went beyond just touch.
The air turned thick with tension, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It was warm. Charged. Real.
Piece by piece, we let go of everything.
The clothes came off gently—shirts pulled over heads, shoes kicked aside, jeans unbuttoned between kisses. Every inch of skin we touched was new and familiar all at once. There was no fear. No hesitation. Just us.
When he finally laid me down on my bed, the room glowed softly from the fairy lights strung across my wall. His hands never left me, and his eyes never stopped meeting mine.
It wasn’t about perfection.
It was about trust.
It was about choosing each other, fully and completely.
Afterwards, as we lay tangled in the sheets, my head resting on his chest and my fingertips tracing lazy circles along his arm, the room felt quieter than it ever had. But it wasn’t empty. It was full of everything we had just shared.
James’s hand rested gently on my hip, his breathing steady, peaceful.
And then I said it—softly, like I was sharing another secret.
“I think I want this forever.”