It wasn't anything he had planned. Despite the purposefulness of his touch when he manipulated the position of their hands, Kyle wasn't in control of this situation. That much was clear to him, and while before with Freya that would have been enough to get him to retreat to where he knew it was safe, this time he stayed stubbornly inside of their bond with her, pushing aside his own fears for the sheer limitless possibilities that they seemed to hold between their joined hands.
At some point he was sure he'd stopped breathing on his own, unable to hear the sound of his own breaths until he realized with a small shock that they'd become entangled with hers, like one living being breathing for two. Sometimes this happened when they were training but that was different. They were always moving, constant blurs of motion around each other whose hearts beat as one. Here, it felt like he hadn't moved in some substantial amount of time though it had likely only been minutes.
That all changed when he felt her fingers lacing in between his and a lump formed in Kyle's throat that he had to work hard to swallow back down. The tightening of their hold on each other didn't do much to strengthen their already rapidly growing connection, it needed no help there, but it did do something to him. Something he couldn't name but felt in its entirety the more he could feel her through the Force.
He felt... strange. Like himself, but whoever that was wasn't someone he recognized. With a smile and a touch from her, Freya had stripped him down to someone he didn't know. Someone without the Resistance, without loss or tragedy. Someone who didn't live in fear of rejection and alienated himself from the rest of the world in order to avoid it.
A moment too late, Kyle realized what was happening. He was being drawn in toward the Light. Her light. The light he'd been resisting long before he ever met her and felt the call of it even more strongly now that they were together. He also no longer feared it the way that he used to, confident in his ability to not give into it entirely. Not the way that she no doubt wanted him to with that soft, hopeful smile that turned his stomach into a bizarre series of knots he had to fight to untangle.
Slowly, he allowed his fingers to curl and fold over onto her, the heels of their palms now firmly pressed together in a movement that felt effortless despite his lack of experience. Catching her hand in his during a training session was light years away from this, but curiously, it didn't invoke the same feelings of instability that so often accompanied Kyle's reaction to the unfamiliar. He felt... anchored.
She anchored him.
There was no Luke Skywalker to interrupt them this time and Kyle was just as unsure of what to do next, but she didn't let go so neither did he. He didn't want to. They were just words before, but he hadn't truly known how very not alone he was until they'd touched hands for the first time tonight. Kyle looked back at her steadily as a strange, thoughtful longing burned its way into the center of his chest the longer he held her gaze. "Sometimes I don't even know what side that is."