Thankfully, it’s only Callum standing in the doorway. He’s already dressed, wearing his clothes from last night.
“You awake?” he murmurs after a moment, voice quiet.
I nod and slowly sit up. Dean stirs, voice muffled as he says something I can’t quite make out.
“We should get up. Richard’s not home yet, but it’s probably best we aren’t all caught up here when he does,” Callum says.
Dean grumbles something about ten more minutes, his arm tightening around Noelle as if to prove a point.
She shifts again, her eyes fluttering open.
She blinks, dazed, then turns her head slightly, her gaze finding mine.
The confusion lasts only a second before her lips curve into a slow, sleepy smile. “Morning.”
“Morning,” I murmur back, brushing my thumb along her side. “Sleep okay?”
Her smile grows. “Yeah. Better than I have in weeks.”
Dean hums against her shoulder. “You’re welcome.”
She laughs softly.
For a heartbeat, the world outside this room doesn’t exist.
It’s just us tangled up in these sheets, the fading smell of all of us still lingering in the air, the way her skin glows faintly in the early light.
The way we all fit together too perfectly…
But it can’t last.
I know it.
The longer we stay here, the higher the chance that someone,Richardnamely, figures out what’s been happening behind closed doors when he’s not around.
And I don’t know if she’s ready to face that fallout if that were to ever come out.
Hell, I don’t know ifIam.
She exhales like the thought has just caught up to her too. “Yeah. We should probably get up before…”
“Yeah,” I say, even though none of us move.
“I’ll make coffee. Unless your dad still drinks that decaf nonsense,” Dean mutters, scrubbing a hand through his hair as he finally groans and drags himself upright.
Noelle laughs, pulling the blanket tighter around herself. “He does. But you can make the real stuff. I think we’re all gonna need it.”
He pecks her lips before sliding off the bed. “You got it.”
As Dean pulls his shirt over his head and pads quietly out of the room, the floorboards creak softly beneath his bare feet.
Callum follows after him, moving with that unhurried steadiness of his.
When the door finally closes behind them, I stay there for another few seconds, watching the woman who’s been haunting my dreams for six years.
The woman who, somehow against every bit of good sense I have left, still feels like the only thing in the world that makes sense.
If I had any sense left, I’d get up, put my jeans on, slip quietly out the door and keep walking down the hall until all traces of her have burned off my skin.
