Chapter 418: Not One Sided

"You’re thinking too much."

"How do you know."

"Because I’ve been watching you." Stan laughed...

Amelia’s heart, which had spent the past several minutes beating far too hard, briefly forgot how to operate at all.

She stared at him.

The soft amber glow of the table lamp caught the quiet certainty in his eyes. Around them the restaurant continued its low, unhurried rhythm, the muted clink of glassware, the distant murmur of a couple two tables over, the faint brush of a server’s sleeve as someone passed behind her chair. None of it registered. There was only the man across from her and the words he had just spoken.

"What... does that mean?"

Stan’s smile was small, almost private. "It means you’re not the only one who feels this way."

He let the silence breathe. He did not rush to fill it. He simply watched her with the calm, unhurried attention of a man who had finally said something he had been quietly not-saying for longer than he had realized. The warmth of the lamplight rested against the side of his face.

Outside the tall windows, the city lights of Inksea shimmered along the darkening promenade, soft gold and white reflected in long, liquid streaks against the glass.

"I’ve noticed the way you look at me."

Amelia went, instantly, another shade warmer. Heat bloomed across her cheeks, sudden and impossible to hide. She could feel it beneath her skin, the tell-tale flush that always betrayed her when she least wanted it to.

"...You noticed."

"For a while."

She very much wanted to disappear into the water glass. The cool condensation on its surface pressed against her fingertips when she shifted them slightly. Stan’s smile deepened, quiet and knowing.

"And I noticed how quickly you came to Inksea after you found out I was back."

She looked down at the linen tablecloth, smooth and pale beneath her hands. "That was work."

"Of course."

She gave him a small, suspicious sideways look. The corner of his mouth curved further. "You don’t believe me."

"Not even a little."

A soft, almost unwilling laugh escaped her, low enough that it barely carried past their table. His expression softened then, the teasing light in his eyes giving way to something quieter.

"But honestly, Amelia, I was glad you came."

That landed on her with more weight than a longer declaration would have.

Because she understood, at once, that he was not saying it as a compliment. He was saying it as a fact.

The words settled into the space between them, warm and solid, and for a moment she could only sit with the quiet truth of them. The faint scent of his cologne, clean, understated, with a trace of something woody, reached her when he shifted slightly in his chair.

"I asked," he continued, voice low, "because I wanted to know if what I was feeling wasn’t one-sided."

Amelia’s eyes widened. Her pulse stuttered once, hard, against her throat.

"You..."

He smiled. "I like you too."

The restaurant was still going quietly on around them.

The small warm lamplight. The low murmur of conversation. The soft brush of fabric as a server passed behind her chair. The city lights along the promenade catching against the darkening windows. None of it, for a second, mattered.

There were only four words.

’I like you too.’

He liked her. The man she had quietly fallen for. The man she had privately convinced herself she might never actually be able to confess to. The man whose attention she treasured far more than she should. He liked her. And she had not even had to risk the rejection first.

A tiny smile began to form at the corners of her mouth. She looked down, because she did not know how to contain it. The cool rim of her glass brushed her knuckles as she pressed her lips together, trying to suppress the expression.

It did not work.

Stan noticed. "Why are you smiling?"

"I’m not."

"You are."

"I’m not."

"You definitely are."

She finally looked up at him. The soft light caught the quiet amusement in his eyes, the faint crease at the corner of his mouth. "Don’t ruin it."

Stan laughed softly, low, warm, the sound carrying only as far as their table.

They sat with it for a moment.

The quiet between them felt different now. Easier. Charged, but no longer careful. Amelia could feel the residual heat in her face, the steady thrum of her pulse still elevated, the cool air from a nearby vent brushing lightly across the back of her neck. Then, quietly, she said:

"I thought I was being obvious."

He smiled. "You were."

Her eyes widened again. "And you knew."

"I suspected."

"You suspected."

"Enough to ask."

She shook her head, a small, rueful sound escaping her. "You’re terrible."

"Maybe."

She smiled, small and a little softer now. "Then why didn’t you say anything sooner?"

Stan considered the question, his gaze remaining steady on hers. "I wasn’t sure you wanted me to."

Stan lied through his teeth, it was obvious that he knew Amelia loved him right from the point he saved her. He could have made a move long ago, but something had always held him back.

It was him who had saved her.

Some irrational part of him worried that if he pursued her, it might make things awkward. As though she might one day wonder if he had saved her because he expected something from her in return. As though accepting his feelings would somehow make her love feel like a debt she owed him.

It was a ridiculous thought. He knew that.

Amelia had never been that kind of person, and her feelings for him had never felt forced or indebted. He knew she genuinely loved him.

Yet, knowing that did little to silence the small hesitation inside him.

He simply couldn’t bring himself to risk making something so genuine feel complicated.

But anyways, his words made her pause.

She realized, in the small quiet way that these things settled into a person, that he had been uncertain too. That ’both’ of them had been carrying it.

That ’both’ of them had been reading the other’s small, careful gestures, lingering looks, messages sent a little too quickly, the decision to fly across a continent under the polite excuse of work, and both had been waiting for a signal the other might already have been waiting for from them.

The realization did not feel dramatic. It felt warm.

Once the first wave of it had settled, her ordinary self began to reassemble, still flushed, still a little unsteady, but recognizably herself again.