Her breath hitches as her fingers tighten in my shirt. “Only you and me.”
That’s all I need.
With Drew gone and Paige at her father’s, we have the place to ourselves. Thank fuck.
We stumble toward the stairs, shedding clothes as we go, laughing breathlessly between kisses. Her skin is warm, her laughter soft, her hands everywhere.
By the time we make it to her room, we’re both lost. The rest of the world falls away.
The morning comes low and quiet, the air heavy with warmth and the faint scent of coffee drifting from the kitchen downstairs. I’d crept down to start it and snuck back into bed.
Olivia sleeps beside me, one arm thrown across my stomach, her breath soft against my skin. Her hair’s a tangle of dark silk over the pillow, the kind of beautiful chaos that makes me never want to move.
I lie there, still and content, feeling the slow, steady rhythm of her breathing. Each rise and fall of her chest presses something deeper into me, something I don’t want to name, not yet.
Because I know once I leave, this easy calm will fade. The world will rush back in—Bas, the restaurants, the distance, all of it clawing for space between us.
For now, though, it’s just her and me.
She stirs, turning toward me, her palm flattening against my chest. “You’re staring,” she mumbles, her voice thick with sleep.
“Guilty.” My thumb brushes over her bottom lip. “You’re beautiful when you sleep.”
Her eyes blink open, soft and full of that familiar warmth that knocks the wind out of me every damn time. Her fingers trace lazy shapes over my arm. Her touch is light, almost absentminded, but every glide of her fingertips burns.
She stops at my forearm, where the ink coils around muscle and bone. Her voice is barely a whisper. “You never did tell me…” She leans down to kiss the ink. “It’s stunning. What does it mean?”
I’m raw from last night, from the reality of how more than distance keeps trying to come between us and at times, we’re our own worst enemies. And now this. This question. It hits a little too close.
For a few beats I don’t answer. My throat tightens, like speaking it aloud might break something open I’ve spent years keeping shut.
Her fingers keep moving, tracing the curve of the snake, the outline of the flowers, soft and unhurried.
“The snake’s for survival.” The gruff timbre of my voice sounds foreign to my own ears. “For the times I had to fight. When there wasn’t anyone else to do it for me.”
She doesn’t move, doesn’t interrupt. Just listens. That’s what she does—sheunderstands.
I stare at the ceiling, remembering too much. The nights on the streets. The quiet after my grandparents died. The faces that turned away. You learn early that the world doesn’t stop for your pain. You shed what hurts, build new skin, and keep moving. Even when it burns.
Her hand drifts over the flowers now—camellias, magnolias, rosemary. Then her gaze lifts to mine, curiosity softening her features. “The flowers?”
A small smile tugs at the corners of my mouth. “They’re what came after. The people who found me when I didn’t think I was worth finding.”
She suspends her breath, fingers still on the bloom. “Bas and Alec.”
I nod, voice low. “Yeah.”
I don’t tell her the rest… That I added the rosemary later, after Bas got sick. Or that the magnolia reminded me of the tree outside their old apartment, the one that bloomed the spring I finally stopped running.
I don’t say that the snake and flowers together meanbalance—that I can’t erase the parts of me that fought to survive, but I can choose what grows from them.
Olivia’s still touching the ink, her fingers slow and reverent. She has no idea what that does to me. No one’s ever touched it like that before. Not with curiosity. Not with care.
I look down at her, at the way her hair spills over my chest, her body relaxed, open. She’s softness and fire all at once. Someone who makes me want to stay when everything in me was built to leave.
She exhales softly, her voice barely above a whisper. “It’s beautiful.”
I nod and press a kiss to her hair. “It’s a reminder, that no matter what I lose, I don’t have to stay lost.”
