When I finished, I washed the bowl, brushed my teeth, and changed into pajamas, then stood in the hallway staring at his closed door.
He left it closed,I thought.He’s respecting your boundaries. He’s giving you space like you obviously wanted.
Except I hadn’t wanted space. I’d wanted him to saylet’s figure this out.
But Connor wasn’t the type to push. He was careful, considerate, always letting other people set the pace. It was one of the things I liked about him—he never made me feel pressured or rushed.
It was also, apparently, going to drive me insane.
I laid down on the couch, punched my stupid flat pillows that didn't smell right, and tried to sleep.
Two hours later, I gave up.
I’d been lying there for an hour, trying to convince myself to just close my eyes and accept that this was my life now—sleeping alone while the man I was maybe falling for slept twenty feet away.
I needed to pee anyway. That was a legitimate reason to get up. Not weird at all.
I padded down the hallway in the dark, did my business, washed my hands. And then I stood in the hallway again, staring at Connor’s door.
There was a sliver of light beneath the door, barely visible. Was he awake too?
My heart started hammering. I took three steps, then stopped and turned back, standing there like an idiot.
Just touch the door, crack it open enough to see if he's awake.
But what if he’d left the light on by accident? What if he was asleep and that woke him up? What if I'd misread everything, and he was relieved to be rid of me? What if—
The door opened.
Connor stood there in sweatpants and a t-shirt, his hair sticking up in about fifteen directions, his eyes soft and tired and so relieved to see me that my breath caught.
“You can’t sleep either, huh?” he said quietly.
I shook my head, not trusting my voice. My whole body felt shaky—not hangover shakes anymore, but something worse.Something that came from spending twelve hours trying to convince myself I could sleep apart from him.
He held out his hand.
I took it.
He led me into his room—ourroom, the one I’d been sleeping in for months, the one that smelled right and felt right and had pillows that were actually comfortable. He climbed into bed and lifted the covers beside him, and when I laid down, he tucked me against his chest like I belonged there.
I fit perfectly. Hip to hip, my head in the hollow of his shoulder, his arm around my waist like he was afraid I’d disappear if he let go.
We didn’t speak. Didn’t need to. The silence said everything—I missed you. I’m sorry. I don’t know what we’re doing but I know I need this. Need you.
His hand traced lazy patterns, mindless and soothing. The tension I’d been carrying all day finally released. My headache, that last stubborn remnant of the hangover, melted away.
His breathing evened out, and my body remembered this, how to sync with his, how to finally relax. I closed my eyes and finally,finally, felt like I could breathe again.
Connor
Todayhadbeenanightmare, the culmination of four days of disasters at Blackstone & Clarke.
First I tried to make sense of Alex’s “organizational system”—and that term was generous, considering what I’d actually found was a business held together by charm, desperation, and an alarming number of sticky notes.
Then I'd met with his new admin team, who hadn't been briefed on any of the Standard Operating Procedures I'd left in place so I'd had to undo all their half-assed duct-taped solutions. Then I'd given them a crash course in not just operations but specifically in Alex-ology—all the quirks I'd recognized and accounted for so he could keep his head in the legal work and client relationships instead of managing his calendar or fixing the printer.
My head was still spinning with mismatched information, urgent deadlines I’d uncovered, and the growing realization that Victoria had drastically undersold how much work it would be to "cover for Alex" during his honeymoon.
