-Ryland Grayson:
The last two weeks had changed something between us in a way I still couldn't fully explain without making it sound simpler than it actually was.
At the beginning, I think I was still half convinced Vaughn was going to wake up one morning and decide this entire thing didn't make sense anymore. That I was just… a temporary shift in his environment. Something intense, confusing, maybe even stressful, but not something real enough to stay.
Because that's how I used to think people worked.
Things happened, then they ended.
But with Vaughn, it didn't end.
It kept continuing in small, consistent ways that slowly replaced whatever distance had existed before.
And I didn't fight it.
That was the part that surprised even me.
I just… let it happen.
Somewhere between training, exhaustion, shared silence in our room at night, and the strange ease that started forming when neither of us tried to pretend anymore, I stopped questioning what I was doing around him.
