I stood. The stool scraped against marble—the loudest sound in the universe.
My hands found her waist. Her breath caught. Her eyes—those deep, luminous eyes that held galaxies of thought and feeling and Sarah—locked onto mine.
I lifted her.
She came up easily—light in my arms despite the weight of what we were carrying between us. Her legs wrapped around my waist. Her arms circled my neck. Her forehead pressed against mine, and for a moment we just breathed each other in.
Shared air. Shared heartbeat. Shared understanding of what came next.
"I love you," she said. Not a whisper. Not a declaration. Just a fact, stated with the same quiet certainty she brought to everything. "I love you, Peter. I've loved you since before I understood what that word meant when a sister says it to a brother and means something the world says she shouldn't."
