The Kiss That Wasn't Part Of The Deal

I woke up with my face flushed. Not that anything had actually happened, nothing happened, not really…., just a shoulder, a held hand and words none of us had taken back. But the memory of it sat differently in the morning light, and I found myself pulling back into old habits almost on instinct, keeping a careful, deliberate distance over breakfast.

Julianii let me have it. He didn't push, didn't ask why I was suddenly speaking to him the way I used to across a boardroom table. He simply matched my distance, giving me the space I seemed to want.

But something had shifted anyway. Our silences weren't hostile anymore. They felt like something else entirely, quieter, warmer, and harder to sit inside of without noticing how much had changed.

That evening, we attended a small corporate dinner, the kind with enough familiar faces that everyone felt entitled to dish out comments on our engagement as though it were a topic open for public discussion.

"Be honest," one of the guests said halfway through the evening, a man I barely recognized from a rival firm, his tone light but pointed. "This is all business, isn't it? Convenient timing, convenient partnership. I don't think anyone here actually believes you two fell in love."

The table went quiet in that particular way that meant everyone was listening more attentively than they showed.

"Whatever we were before," I said, surprising myself with how quickly the words came, "isn't anyone's business now!"

I felt Julianii eyes on my face, not the careful, measured attention he usually gave a room, but something more direct, more curious, like he was trying to work out where that answer had actually come from.

The conversation progressed, but he kept glancing at me for the rest of the dinner, something unreadable behind his expression.

Outside the restaurant while waiting for the car, he finally asked.

"Why did you defend me in there?"

"I don't know," I admitted.

He stepped closer, close enough that I could feel the warmth of him even through the cool evening air, close enough that stepping back would have required a deliberate choice I found myself not making.

"About last night," he said in a hushed tone.

"We don't have to talk about it."

"I think we do, he moved closer, close enough for my heart to skip a beat." His eyes locked in with mine staring deep into my soul. "If we cross a certain line, Sabine, pretending stops being possible. I need you to understand that before either of us does something we can't undo."

"What if I don't want to pretend?"

The question hung there between us, changing the air itself.

He didn't answer right away. He looked at me, giving me every opportunity to step back, to laugh it off, to blame the wine or the evening or anything other than what I actually meant.

I didn't step back.

He reached up slowly and touched my face, the same careful gesture from the night on the sofa, except this time neither of us pulled away from where it led. He leaned down, and I met him halfway, I felt my heart skip at the contact, fireworks spreading throughout my body.

It was brief, Careful, It's wasn't like the reckless, thing I might have imagined if I ever let myself imagine it at all. Just soft, deliberate and searching, like he was asking a question with his lips instead of his words.

When we separated, neither of us spoke for a moment.

"We don't have to pretend it meant anything," Julianii said finally, his voice lower than usual.

I stared at him, my eyes darting back and forth between his eyes and face.

"I didn't say it meant nothing."

We didn't talk the rest of the way home. The silence in the car felt charged, full of everything neither of us had said yet, and by the time we walked back into the house, my chest was tight with something I couldn't fully name.

I unclasped the engagement ring from my finger, the motion automatic before I even decided to do it.

Julianii stopped walking abruptly, the action catching him off guard, he stood watching me. For a second, I saw something like fear cross his face, quick and unguarded, like he thought I was ending everything standing right there in the parlor.

I set the ring down on the table between us instead.

"I need to know whether I'm wearing this because of the will," I said quietly.

I looked up at him.

"Or because I want you.”