The hallway was narrow, their bodies close out of necessity. He tried to keep it casual, his arm brushing hers as he passed, nothing more than coincidence. But she shifted almost imperceptibly—leaned the slightest degree—so that what should have been fleeting became something else entirely. Their shoulders touched, not in passing, but in a quiet collision that lingered too long to ignore.
For a moment neither of them moved. Her skin pressed against his, the warmth undeniable, the contact sharper for its stillness. She tilted her head just slightly, enough for a few strands of hair to graze his arm, as though she wanted him to feel her without seeing her. He froze, caught between stepping back and leaning into the space she refused to give up. But she stayed, her shoulder firm against his, her body unhurried, savoring the closeness as if it were intentional all along.
When she finally walked past, the ghost of her touch stayed alive on his skin. It wasn’t the brush itself that unsettled him—it was the choice she made to linger, the decision carved into the subtle lean of her body. In that one second, the hallway became less a passage and more a trap, a place where her restraint looked like surrender, and her surrender looked like the beginning of something else.