“You’re safe,” he whispered. “I’ve got you.”
His voice scratched against the inside of my ribs. I wanted to cry. But I didn’t. I justbreathed.I knew this couldn’t last. Nothing ever did. And that was the cruelest part—that I was already bracing for the moment it would be taken away.
My eyelids dropped again, lashes brushing my cheeks. The silence settled thick between us, broken only by our breathing. Then I felt it—his lips ghosting against my hair.
“I’ll protect you,” he murmured.
I didn’t answer. Didn’t need to. Because in that moment, I slept in his arms feeling safe for the first time in years—and terrified of how much I needed him to be there when I woke.
CHAPTER 8
ANTHONY
The morning light bled through the blinds in thin slats of gold-drenched gray. It spilled across Elliot’s bare shoulder like a blessing or a curse. I hadn’t moved in hours. Not since he peeled off my hoodie in that slow, exhausted way and collapsed back beside me, sleep tugging him under before I could speak.
I told myself this was a choice. That I was here because I wanted to be. Because staying was what good people did when someone was hurting. I told myself it wasn’t fear keeping me still. That it wasn’t easier to stay than to face what would happen if I left. I told myself a lot of things in the quiet.
Elliot lay curled against me now, one hand fisted in the hair on my chest, even unconscious he was afraid I’d disappear. His breath ghosted warm and steady against my ribs, in a rhythm I’d memorized without meaning to. My arm was completely numb beneath him, pins and heat threading through it, but I didn’t dare move.
If I shifted, he might wake. And if he woke… this fragile, impossible peace between us might crack open at the seams. The thought of that tightened something in my chest—the awareness of how far in I already was, how little control I had over wantinghim, over the part of me that lived for these stolen moments of his presence.
I couldn’t risk it. Not this—him. Not when Elliot was the only thing that felt real in a life built on obligation and sacrifice. He was my tether to something softer, something that reminded me I still had a heart—beating and breaking inside my chest.
My hand hovered, an inch from his back. The want was there—sharp, overpowering and insistent—but it wasn’t really about touch. It was about proof. That he was here. That he was warm. That he hadn’t vanished while I wasn’t looking.
For one breathless second, I let myself pretend he was mine. Just mine. Even if that peace was temporary, borrowed like everything else I touched but could never keep. Even if the only part of me still alive was the part wrapped around him.
He fit against me like a missing piece. Small and precious. Delicate in a way that made my chest ache but not fragile. Never that. There was steel beneath his skin, forged in grief and silence, but when he let it drop. When he softened, just for me—I came undone.
I told myself I was keeping him safe. But it was a lie.
I was addicted. Obsessed.
There was a part of me that wanted to be the one he relied on completely, the steady hand when everything else fell apart. Not because I owned him, but because he was someone who needed someone to stay—someone like me, who couldn’t walk away. It was instinctive. Protective. Dangerous.
His chest rose and fell slowly beneath the sheet, a rhythm I could sync my heart to. He was dreaming. I could tell by the way his brow furrowed, the way his mouth moved like it was chasing words he couldn’t speak aloud.
I wanted to touch him. Not for comfort or protection. But because Ineededto. My hand hovered above the small of his back, so close I could feel his heat seeping into my palm likewildfire. I wanted to drag my fingers up the ladder of his spine, feel him shiver under me, confirm with touch what I’d already come to know: He was real. He was here. He was everything I’d never deserved.
I wanted him with a desperation that hollowed me out from the inside. I wanted to kiss the sorrow from his lips. I wanted to break through the grief that drowned him and show him he wasn’t alone. I wanted him to cry into my mouth, to let me carry the weight of all the things he couldn’t say.
God help me—I wanted to be the one he shattered for.
His breath hitched.
Panic punched through me. I thought he’d woken. But no. He only shifted closer, one slender leg curling tighter around mine, his face nuzzling into my chest like I was something safe. Somethinggood.
But I wasn’t. I was a lie he hadn’t figured out yet.
I closed my eyes, tried to breathe around the ache. Tried to silence the fantasies clawing through me. My mouth on his neck. His thighs wrapped around my hips. The way he’d sound moaning my name through gritted teeth. I imagined his lashes fluttering as I kissed him awake, imagined his sleepy smile, imagined the softness giving way to need.
And then shame washed over me, sharp and cold.
He wasn’t mine to want.
But he was the only thing I wanted.
I turned my face away and clenched my jaw, furious at myself—for the hunger, for the craving, for daring to look at someone so broken like he was salvation.
