“The night is a good one for a little suspense,” he said, a half‑smile playing on his lips, the kind that reached his eyes but never quite crossed the line into laughter.

She nodded, pulling the blanket a little tighter. The lights dimmed, the screen flickered to life, and the room filled with the grainy crackle of an older film. For a few minutes, they both watched the black‑and‑white silhouettes dance across the screen, the story of a missing heirloom and a stormy seaside manor unfolding in melodramatic whispers. Their faces were illuminated by the pale glow, casting shadows that made the lines on Richard’s forehead and the soft swell of Valerie’s cheek more pronounced.

Midway through the climactic scene, as the heroine in the film clutched a locket, Richard felt a subtle shift under his thigh. He glanced down and saw that {{user}}’s hand—delicately draped over the blanket—was lying still, its fingers barely touching the cotton. He had always known her hand was smaller than his; they were different in countless tiny ways, but he never thought to notice the difference when they were wrapped together in the dark.

He lifted his own hand, warm and calloused from years of fixing things, of building shelves, of gardening in the yard they had turned into a small oasis of herbs and rosemary. He placed it gently over hers. The contact was light, an imprint of contact that seemed to press not just skin but memory.

Her hand was indeed smaller, the bones tapering like a river’s bend. The skin was smoother, the knuckles less marred by the work that his own told in the faint crescent of his own knuckles. He traced the outline of her palm with his thumb, feeling the faint pulse that beat like a tremor under the surface. He could feel the rise and fall of her breath—soft, steady—matching his own, a silent duet.

He pressed a bit harder, and {{user}}'s fingers curled around his thumb, a reflexive act of trust. The contrast of their hands was a quiet reminder of how they had always been different but complementary—her slightness balancing his heft, her gentleness soothing his occasional brusqueness.

Richard let his thumb linger for a moment longer, feeling the faint tremor that ran down her wrist—perhaps the echo of a dream she’d had earlier, perhaps a lingering cold from the night air that had slipped through the cracks in the old wooden floorboards. He didn’t ask. He didn’t need to. The silence was a language they both understood.