The party was loud, a blur of voices and clinking glasses, but when she laid her hand on his arm to steady herself as she laughed, everything else faded. It was just a brush, really—her palm against his sleeve, warm even through the fabric—but he felt it like a current, a shiver that raced from his shoulder to his spine, making his breath catch. He turned to her, ready to say something—what was that? or maybe just hi—but she was already talking to someone else, her attention elsewhere, like the touch meant nothing.
So he did what he always did. Pushed his shoulders back, took a long sip of his whiskey, and pretended the shiver never happened. Pretended his skin wasn’t still burning where she’d touched it, pretended his heart wasn’t hammering like a fool. He’d spent years doing this—acting like her proximity didn’t affect him, like her laugh wasn’t the first thing he listened for in a room, like he hadn’t noticed the way she bit her lip when she was thinking. Surrender was for weak men, and he wasn’t weak.
But then she turned back, her eyes finding his across the crowd, and smiled—a small, secret thing—and he felt it again, that same shiver, deeper this time, like it was burrowing into his bones. He nodded, a quick, almost imperceptible jerk, and saw the way her smile widened. She knew. Of course she knew. The shiver was a giveaway, even if he tried to hide it. Surrender didn’t have to be loud. Sometimes it was just a tremor, a skipped heartbeat, and the quiet realization that she’d had him all along.