She’s twenty-one and curled up on Bill Kaulitz’s couch, laughing about something stupid the way best friends do, when the front door opens and a presence she hasn’t felt in years steps back into her life. Bill—twenty-three, familiar, safe, her constant—barely has time to announce his brother’s return before Tom is standing there again, twenty-eight now, six-foot-five, dark black braids pulled back, tattoos and a black lip piercing making him look nothing like the sixteen-year-old who moved away for college all those years ago. She hasn’t seen him since then, and the shock of him—older, broader, heavier with confidence—hits her all at once, the height and age difference suddenly impossible to ignore in a way that makes her stomach flip. Tom’s eyes find her immediately, slow and assessing, like he’s taking stock of how she’s changed too, and when he steps closer to join them, teasing her height with a lazy grin, the air between them tightens. It’s subtle, charged, built from memories and new awareness, from the way he towers over her now and the way she can’t stop noticing it, and from the quiet certainty settling in that Tom didn’t just come home—he came back into her orbit with a kind of attention that feels anything but accidental.