“Was this weird?” I murmur into his chest.
He presses a kiss to the top of my head, his lips soft against my hair. “I hope not.”
I let out a quiet laugh, one that catches in my throat.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I know I’m supposed to feel guilty. Like I’ve crossed some line I promised not to.
But all I feel is warm. Anchored. Alive.
And this time, I don’t apologize for it.
Not to him.
Not even to myself.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Birdie! Time to rise and shine!” Viv’s voice bounces down the hallway, her voice all cheer and singsongy.
I jolt awake, nearly rolling off the bed like a log off a truck, my arm flailing until I manage to smack myself in the face. Elegant. I groan as consciousness sets in and I realize three very concerning things in quick succession:
My mouth is glued shut by my own dried drool.
The beachy, care-free curls I went to sleep with abandoned me overnight and now hang like limp linguine against my forehead.
Noah.
Noah is still here.
Sprawled gloriously across the mattress like a Roman god slumming it in suburbia. He’s on Owen’s side of the bed, because of course he is, and he’s shirtless, the sheet barely covering enough to keep this scene PG-13. His dark hair is mussed, his body warm and solid, and I hate how much I want to crawl back under the covers and continue what we did last night.
I also hate that I’m about five seconds from being caught by my friends with a literal mailman in my bed.
“Um, hang on!” I shout toward the door, scrambling like a raccoon caught in kitchen lights. I smack Noah’s bare back with pure urgency. “Get up.”
He groans, groggy and infuriatingly unconcerned. “What’s going on?” His voice is thick with sleep, and there’s a dreamy little smile on his face.
“I forgot to have you sneak out before the crack of dawn like a teenage boy whose boots are on the wrong porch,” I hiss, yanking the sheet off him and tossing it toward my feet. “Viv and Marin and Harper are back, and if they see you here, I’ll have to explain, and I’m not sure I’m ready to explain.”
I blink at him, taking in the warm, gloriously male shape taking up Owen’s side of the bed, which feels both symbolic and mildly sacrilegious, and my stomach does a weird lurch. Guilt, lust, panic, maybe gas. Too early to tell.
“Shit, shit, shit,” I whisper, scrambling to untangle myself from the sheets. “You weren’t supposed to still be here.”
Noah groans and rolls onto his stomach. “So? Didn’t we already establish they’re fine with this?”
“So?” I throw on my T-shirt and gesture wildly. “There’s a picture of my dead husband staring at us from the nightstand, and you’re lying there like you own this bed. I’m emotionally compromised, Noah.”
