At 2:35 AM, Karina Larkin is awake in the way people become awake when something inside them has already stood up and gone to the window. The house is quiet but not asleep. It breathes the low, familiar breaths of waiting—floorboards holding memory, walls keeping secrets, the refrigerator humming like a promise it never finishes. Outside, the streetlight paints the living room in pale gold, and dust drifts through it like slow snowfall. Karina sits at the edge of the couch with her feet tucked under her, hands wrapped around a mug that went cold an hour ago, listening for a sound she has been rehearsing for six months.

Six months is long enough to learn the weight of absence. Long enough for mornings to stretch and evenings to fold in on themselves. Long enough to discover which corners of a room collect loneliness and which ones refuse to let it stay. When he left, she told herself she would be brave in practical ways—pay the bills on time, water the plants, answer questions with calm certainty. She did all of that. What she did not plan for was how love behaves when it is asked to wait. How it paces. How it sharpens. How it grows more articulate with every quiet night.

She checks the time again. 2:35 AM. The numbers glow like they know something she doesn’t. The hours since midnight have been a soft procession of memories: the way his jacket always smelled like outside, the way he reached for her hand without looking, the way he said goodbye at the airport like it was a comma instead of a period. Six months ago, she stood in a crowd of departures and told herself that love could survive distance if it had somewhere to land when it came home.

Karina learned to mark time by small rituals. Coffee brewed for one. Two plates taken down, then one put back. The way the bed insisted on the shape of him long after it should have let go. She learned the sound of her own footsteps at night, the creak near the hallway that always startled her even though she expected it. She learned that courage sometimes looks like staying soft when it would be easier to harden. She learned that longing can be gentle, that it can sit beside you like a cat, purring, insistent, refusing to be ignored.

At 2:35 AM, a car passes too slowly. She lifts her head. The sound fades. Her heart settles back into its practiced rhythm. She exhales and laughs quietly at herself, a sound she has made many nights now. Hope, she has discovered, is a muscle. Use it too much and it aches. Don’t use it enough and it forgets what it’s for.

She remembers the first week he was gone, how she kept the lights on too late, how she filled the silence with television she didn’t watch. She remembers the second month, when the ache dulled into something manageable, something she could carry without announcing. She remembers the fourth month, when she found herself smiling at his name on her phone without checking the time, when absence had stopped being an emergency and started being a condition. Through it all, she kept a careful ledger of moments she would tell him about when he returned—how the neighbor’s dog learned to open the gate, how the old oak dropped a limb in a storm, how she fixed the sink herself and felt impossibly proud.

She checks the time again. Still 2:35 AM. The clock does that sometimes, holds a minute like it wants to feel important.

Karina rises and walks to the window. The street is empty, expectant. The moon hangs low, unembarrassed by its own brightness. She presses her forehead lightly against the glass and lets herself imagine him driving through the last miles, hands familiar on the wheel, thoughts finally allowed to arrive where his body is going. She imagines his smile, the one that starts on one side first, the one that always made her feel chosen even before he said anything. She imagines the weight of him crossing the threshold, how the house will recognize him before she does.

Six months ago, they made promises that were practical and unromantic. Call when you land. Text when you can. Don’t forget to eat. They didn’t say anything about rings or kneeling or forever because those words felt too fragile to ship across oceans and job sites. They trusted the quieter vows—the ones that survive weather and time zones, the ones that show up even when no one is watching.

A sound interrupts her imagining. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just a car door closing with the unmistakable certainty of arrival. Karina’s heart leaps, stumbles, rights itself. She does not run. She walks, because this moment deserves steadiness. The front door opens, and there he is, framed by the night he has finally finished traveling through. He looks thinner, older in the eyes, more himself in the way people become when they have been tested and returned intact.

They do not speak right away. They step into each other as if gravity has been rehearsing this reunion since the day he left. His arms feel exactly right, exactly remembered. Her face fits against his chest like it was designed with this purpose in mind. She breathes him in—road, work, the faint echo of places she has never been but knows intimately through his voice. The house exhales with them.

“It’s late,” she says, because someone has to say something, and because time has taught her to respect itself.

“I know,” he says, smiling into her hair. “I tried to hurry.”

They pull back just enough to look at each other, to confirm what touch already knows. His hands are warm. His eyes are wet in the way that suggests gratitude rather than sadness. He sets his bag down like it no longer matters, like the life he carried away has been successfully delivered and signed for.

They sit on the couch, the same one she has kept her company for half a year. He notices the mug, cold and abandoned. He notices the way she has changed her hair, the way she carries herself now. She notices the new lines at the corners of his mouth, the confidence that comes from surviving something difficult without becoming bitter. They talk in short bursts at first—safe details, familiar ground. How was the flight. How was the drive. Did you eat. Each question is a bridge, each answer a step closer to something larger.

At 2:35 AM, he reaches into his jacket pocket and pauses. Karina feels the air shift before she understands why. He looks at her with a seriousness that has been earning its place for months. He takes her hand, the left one, the one that has reached for him across continents without knowing it was practicing.

“I didn’t plan to do this tonight,” he says, and she knows immediately that this is not true in the way people say things to give themselves courage. “I wanted to wait until morning. I wanted it to be perfect.”

She smiles, because perfection has never been their language. She squeezes his hand, because some truths need encouragement.

“I spent six months thinking,” he continues. “About work, about distance, about what it means to come back to someone and feel like you’re coming home. I thought about the nights you stayed up, the mornings you handled alone, the way you made space for me even when I wasn’t here to fill it.”

He reaches into his pocket again and this time does not hesitate. The box is small, almost shy. He opens it with care, like he is handling something alive. The ring catches the light from the streetlamp and throws it back in a way that feels intentional, as if even metal understands ceremony.

Karina’s breath leaves her all at once. The room tilts, steadies. She feels the weight of six months compress into a single moment that asks to be answered. She thinks of the nights she went to bed early because hope was exhausting. She thinks of the mornings she woke up proud of herself for making it through another day. She thinks of the love that waited with her, patient and uncomplaining.

He lowers himself to one knee, not because tradition demands it, but because gravity does. Because some questions carry enough meaning to pull the body toward the ground.

“Karina Larkin,” he says, and the sound of her name in his mouth feels like a blessing. “Will you marry me?”

Time does something strange at 2:35 AM. It widens. It softens. It gives her room to feel everything without rushing her through any of it. She laughs first, because joy needs a release. Then she cries, because relief has been waiting a long time to speak. She nods before she answers, because her body has already decided.

“Yes,” she says, finally, clearly. “Yes. Of course.”

He slides the ring onto her finger, and the fit is exact in the way things are when they have been imagined enough times. He stands and pulls her into him, and they hold each other like people who have crossed something wide and lived to tell about it. The house watches. The streetlight approves. The clock blinks and moves on, satisfied.

Later, much later, they lie in bed and talk in the low voices of people who do not want to wake the future too soon. They plan nothing and everything. They laugh about how tired they are. They marvel at how simple it feels now that the hardest part is over. Karina traces the ring with her thumb, learning its presence, its promise. She thinks of all the nights that led here, all the waiting that turned out to be a kind of preparation.

At 2:35 AM, Karina Larkin learned that love does not waste time. It uses it. It stretches it. It asks it to carry meaning until meaning is ready to arrive. She closes her eyes with his arm around her and feels the quiet certainty settle in. The long night is over. Morning can take its time.

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