"I think I understand you now, too!" she told him.

  "I don't want to keep secrets from you anymore, Qian Meng. I want both of us to be honest. I still…"

  "What?" she prompted.

  "I meant every word I said to you, Qian Meng. I know that we had an understanding. But I want you to know me. You're the only woman I really want to know me. I have shut myself off from everyone around me for so long. I've close myself off from emotion. I haven't wanted to know anyone and I haven't wanted anyone to know me. But it feels so…"

  And then their foreheads were together and her eyes were closed and just feeling him breathe against her. It grounded her.

  "I'm listening…" she said. She steeled her heart.

  "It feels so different with you. I don't know why. I didn't plan on any of this. I didn't plan on caring for you."

  Qian Meng swallowed hard. She hadn't prepared herself for this.

  "Me either," she replied.

  "This isn't what I thought this arrangement would turn out to be."

  That was her moment. She regretted the way she had treated him. And despite that, he still opened up to her.

  "You asked me if I was there with you. I was. I was there with you and it was perfect. You gave me everything I needed at that moment and so much more. It terrified me, Mo Qingchen."

  "You felt it," he breathed. He was quiet, almost as if he were thinking out loud.

  "I did. I felt it and it scared me. It brought back all my bad thoughts. Like you said, when I got into this with you, I wasn't expecting any of this. I wasn't expecting to feel for you. But I felt so much for you in that moment. It was overwhelming." She shook her head, trying to snap herself out of the intrusive thoughts once again.

  "All the feelings I had for you and didn't know about just hit me like a train. And I realized how much I depended on you. I trusted you so much that I would believe it if you told me the color of the sky is red. And that is terrifying," she admitted.

  "Do you think I wasn't scared too?" he asked firmly.

  Qian Meng's heart was racing. This was the first time they had really spoken about their feelings for each other and she felt like she was dreaming. She had not dreamed that she would be in this place right then. There was something about discussing your past grief that brought people together.

  "I don't know. I had no idea what you were feeling. I was too preoccupied with myself." She was ashamed of it, too.

  "Do you want to know?"

  "Of course, I do…" she trailed off.

  "I was scared, too. Scared, confused, overwhelmed. All of it."

  "You were?" she squeaked.

  "I have experienced a lot of unexplainable and beautiful things in my life, Qian Meng. I have built a multi-billion dollar dollar empire from the ground up. I have made billions in a single day. I have eaten the best dishes in the planet and thought that I had every experience there was to have. But then there was you… yesterday. And none of those other things mattered. None of that compared to what I felt with you. None of that ever made me feel so alive."

  Her heart skipped a beat or several as she processed what he was saying. This was as honest as she could ever hoped him to be with her. She had been too scared to face her feelings for him and even after she had pushed him away, he had put in all his emotions so eloquently for her. She was the luckiest damn woman in the planet.

  She wanted to try with him.

  She wrapped one arm around his neck and cuddled him. Her in her wet clothes against him, their faces so close that she could feel the sear of his black eyes staring at her.

  "I've never felt anything like it before, either," she finally told him.

  "The sex…"

  She smiled a little, feeling herself blush. And that was something she didn't do. Blush. Mo Qingchen made her blush. What was happening to her?

  "Yes. The sex," she muttered.

  "I have had my fair share of sexual experiences. I have been with beautiful women," he started.

  She looked at him and quirked an eyebrow. "Is this supposed to make me feel good about myself?"

  He laughed a little but that intense expression never left. "My point is, I didn't think sex could get any better than I had already experienced."

  "And then? Bragging to a first-timer?"

  "And then we shared what we shared and I realized that I had never truly connected with someone before. Not like that."

  She slid her hand up around the back of his neck and found the soft hair there.

  "It wasn't just sex."

  "No, it wasn't." She agreed.

  "And even after. All I did was lay there and hold you. I watched you fall asleep. It was simple, yet I don't think I have ever been so content in my life."

  For a man who spoke very few words, Mo Qingchen found it easy to express himself.

  "It's… a lot," Qian Meng said after a while. "And I don't really know what all of it means."

  "It doesn't have to mean anything right this second, Qian Meng. We just started to think about it. I haven't presented my side of the story yet."

  That made her feel better about how she had been acting. He was right. It didn't mean that everything had to change between them. They were still themselves. They were still Mo Qingchen and Yun Qian Meng. They only had to take baby steps towards the endgame.

  "Okay," I nodded.

  "Don't go acting all weird around me now just because I know you have a crush on me," Mo Qingchen teased softly.