Chapter 54
Sent.
+25 BONUS
I shut the laptop and sat in the silence. It had the particular weight of Richard’s absence. I hadn’t. seen him since that morning–just a note scrawled in the margin of my meeting packet: Good instinct bringing in the western reps first.
There’d been no official debrief. No dinner. No footfalls echoing down the hallway. But I felt him. Like gravity in the other room.
I brushed my teeth in the bathroom. The overhead light flickered once–old wiring, or maybe just nerves. I was halfway through tying my hair back when I opened the door.
He was there.
Not close, not looming. Just… there. A quiet presence, like always.
He met my eyes for half a second before looking back in his room. “Do you want to stay again? Just in case the injury flares up.”
The air was warm, but everything in me felt tight and frigid, like I’d locked myself in from the inside.
I nodded.
He stepped aside. I moved past him, skin humming from the nearness, from the restraint. We didn’t touch. We never did, not really. But the air between us always felt like something waiting to spark.
I changed in the guest bathroom–slowly, methodically, like buying time might give me answers. When I came back out, he was already in bed, turned toward the far wall.
1 crossed the room, pulled back the covers, and slid into the empty space beside him, Cold sheets. Silent ceiling
Eventually, my eyes drifted closed. But sleep didn’t come easy. Not when his breath was steady beside mine. Not when I could feel every inch of space we weren’t crossing.
And not when I didn’t want that space to stay empty forever.
1 rolled slightly, just enough to face him. His back was still to me, but I could see the tension in his shoulders, the way he held himself so still it was almost unnatural. I’d memorized that silhouette over weeks now–the breadth of it, the calm it pretended to carry.
“Are you awake?” I whispered.
A pause. Then: “Yes.”
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Chapter 54
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My breath caught in my throat. I waited for something else, anything else, but he didn’t move.
“I keep thinking,” I said, voice low, “that it shouldn’t feel like this. Just lying here. Not touching. It shouldn’t be this loud in my head.”
Another beat of silence. Then, slowly, he turned toward me. His eyes found mine in the dark.
“I know,” he said.
My fingers were trembling where they clutched the blanket. I wanted to close the gap, just reach out and press my palm to his chest and feel the heartbeat I knew was just as wrecked as mine.
But I didn’t.
Neither did he.
“I’m trying to be good,” I murmured. “I’m trying to be smart.‘
“I know,” he said again. “Me too.”
We were so close now, I could feel the warmth of his breath. My whole body thrummed with it. His hand shifted under the covers, like he was thinking of reaching for mine–but it didn’t come any
closer.
We’d never talked about it, not in real terms. Not in daylight. Not like this. Drunken kisses, half- formed pleas in the dark–those didn’t count. Somehow, this felt more intimate than all of it. Just almost saying what we wanted. Just hovering near the truth. Words would’ve made it real.
His jaw clenched, barely visible in the moonlight slicing through the curtains. “It would be so easy,” he said. “To not be good or smart.‘
“But we don’t do easy,” I said, and it came out like a dare.
He didn’t answer that. But his hand shifted again, and this time it brushed against mine–barely, just the faintest pressure. Like testing gravity. Like proof we were real.
My fingers curled in response. Not gripping, not claiming Just… acknowledging
We stayed like that, breath to breath, heat to heat, for what could’ve been a lifetime. That tiny contact said everything we weren’t allowed to
When I finally let sleep come, it wasn’t peaceful. But it was honest
And he didn’t move away.
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Chapter 55
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+25 BONUS
