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Jayce had never realized how long a week could feel. Not until Mel was gone.
And not just gone in the everyday sense. She wasn’t at his side on campus, brushing past him in the halls with her effortless grace. She wasn’t showing up at his apartment with takeout containers and a stack of her case readings she swore they could “pretend to study” while actually arguing about everything under the sun. She wasn’t beside him in the library, legs crossed, pen twirling, shooting him a fond smile whenever she caught him staring.
Instead, she was in another city, across an ocean, buried in her semester abroad. And Jayce had been left to fill the ache with phone calls and glowing pixels on a laptop screen.
He’d thought he could handle it. He was Jayce Talis; smart, busy, always in motion. He’d bury himself in work, in research, in labs and projects and his and Mel’s friends Viktor, Sky, Elora, Lest and Shoola. But he underestimated how much of his daily rhythm depended on her. The morning texts, the casual brush of her hand on his arm, the way she made even silence feel like conversation. Without her, he was off-balance, unmoored.
And now, finally, the wait was ending.
‘On the train. Five stops left.’ Her last text sat like a brand in his mind. Jayce had read it ten times already, every reread making his pulse climb higher. He’d barely been able to sit still on the commuter train that took him to the station. His knee bounced, fingers drumming against his thigh, a nervous energy that only grew the closer he got.
She’s really coming back.
The platform was crowded, but Jayce scanned it like a man starved. His heart nearly stopped when he saw her.
Mel stood a little apart from the crowd, as if space naturally formed around her. She had her scarf looped around her shoulders, hair tucked behind one ear in that casually elegant way that always drove him crazy. She was glancing through the throng, her posture poised but her expression impatient, like she was holding back from running straight into the arms of whoever she sought.
Him.
Jayce’s feet were moving before he could think. “Mel,” he called, voice hoarse with disbelief.
Her eyes snapped toward him. For one heartbeat, her face was still. Then it bloomed, radiant with a smile that undid him completely.
“Jayce.”
It wasn’t a whisper, wasn’t a shout but it carried like a lifeline across the station. He reached her in a few long strides, barely managing to keep from crushing her in his arms immediately. Instead, he caught her hands, lifting them to his lips and kissing the back of each with almost desperate reverence.
She laughed, startled and fond. “You’re ridiculous.”
“You’re late,” he replied, but his grin betrayed him. His chest ached from smiling so hard.
Her free hand brushed against his cheek, tentative at first, then lingering as though she, too, needed the reassurance of touch. “I missed you,” she said simply. And though Mel had always been capable of the grand, polished turn of phrase, it was these unguarded, unadorned words that made Jayce’s throat tighten.
“I missed you more,” he whispered, voice breaking. And then he did crush her to him, arms around her waist, burying his face in her shoulder. She was warm, solid, real, no longer just a voice in his headphones, no longer a flickering face on his laptop.
Mel clung back just as tightly. Her fingers curled into the fabric of his coat, holding on like she never wanted to let go. She murmured something against his chest too muffled to catch and when she tilted her face up, her hazel eyes were shining.
“Jayce, I hated being away. Every lecture, every street I walked, I kept wishing you were there to see it with me. It felt wrong without you and our friends.”
Hearing her say it, knowing she had carried the same ache, made Jayce’s heart pound so hard it hurt. He brushed her hair back, cupped her cheek. “You don’t know how good it is to hear that,” he murmured. “I kept telling myself you were probably too busy, probably didn’t miss me as much as I missed you—”
“Idiot,” she interrupted softly, smiling through the wobble in her voice. “You’re all I thought about. Half the people in my program probably think I’m obsessed with my boyfriend. And they’d be right.”
Jayce’s breath caught. For once, words deserted him. He kissed her forehead instead, then her temple, then hovered just a heartbeat too long over her lips before pulling back, afraid of overwhelming her in public. But the look she gave him: amused, tender, utterly smitten, nearly undid him all over again.
“I’m never letting you go this long again,” he said fiercely. “I’ll fly there myself next time.”
Mel arched a brow, teasing but fond. “Good. Then you can carry my luggage.”
He laughed, chest loosening for the first time in weeks, and pulled her back against him. “Gladly.”
They stood there until the crowds thinned, two people wrapped up in the gravity of finally being together again. Jayce didn’t care about the gawkers or the noise. All that mattered was her hand in his, her head on his chest, the proof that she had come back to him.
When they finally moved, she looped her arm through his, close and possessive, and Jayce thought he might never stop smiling. The city stretched out before them, but for him, the only thing worth seeing was Mel, here, now, walking home at his side.