My jaw tightens.
Not in anger. In recognition. Because I am the mirror image of what she just described. Different circumstances, identical outcomes. I have never cuddled my partners either. Never stayed because I wanted to. Never allowed the physical closeness to persist beyond its transactional purpose because attachment to people who do not intend to stay is a vulnerability I could not afford.
We are the same wound wearing different faces.
Has Mae ever really dated at all? The question moves through my mind with a quiet ache. This girl who deserves the full, ridiculous, embarrassing experience of dating, the hand-holding and the pet names and the fighting over restaurant choices and the falling asleep on someone's chest because you are safe enough to let go, has been navigating adulthood without any of it. Surviving on necessity. Substituting connection with convenience. Building a life that functions perfectly well on its own but functions alone.
Then again, I am not exactly the authority on traditional romance.
I have not officially dated anyone either. The encounters I have had were exactly what Mae described from the opposite side. Bodies in beds. Transactions completed. Mornings spent untangling myself from sheets and situations with the efficiency of someone who never intended to stay. I told myself it was a choice. An Alpha preference for independence. A refusal to be tied down.
It was not a choice. It was a pattern. The same avoidance dressed in different clothes, and I am only recognizing the costume now because Mae just described her version of wearing it.
I pat my chest.
Lightly. Twice. The gesture is an echo of the pillow-pat she gave me minutes ago, a mirrored invitation that I offer with a softness I am not accustomed to displaying. My hand rests against my sternum, holding the space open, and my eyes find hers in the dim room.
"Climb me up, MaeBell."
She huffs, the sound carrying a drowsy indignation that makes the corner of my mouth twitch.
"You make it sound like you are a tree."
"Six foot one. Broad shoulders. Vertically imposing. The comparison is not entirely inaccurate."
"You are impossible."
"And you are stalling. Come here."
She huffs again, a second gust of theatrical protest, and then she moves.
Slowly, with the uncoordinated determination of someone operating on fumes and muscle memory, she closes the distance between us on the narrow mattress. Her body unfolds from its defensive curl, her arm reaching across my torso, her headfinding the space between my shoulder and my collarbone with the instinctive precision of a puzzle piece sliding into the only gap that fits.
She settles against me.
The contact is immediate and total. Her cheek pressed against my chest, her palm flat over my heartbeat, her leg draped across mine beneath the blanket. Her body molds to the contour of my side with a willingness that tells me she has wanted this closeness all along, has been craving it behind the pouting and the deflection and the I do not cuddle disclaimer.
And the relief that floods through my body is staggering.
Not sexual. Not the charged, heated response I might have expected from having an Omega pressed against me in a dark room wearing my jersey and underwear. This is different. Deeper. A loosening of tension I did not know I was carrying, a release that originates somewhere behind my sternum and radiates outward until my entire body softens against the mattress with a surrender I have never experienced in another person's presence.
Her warmth seeps through the fabric between us. Her vanilla sugar scent concentrates against my neck, filling each inhale with a sweetness that makes the restless thing in my chest go quiet for the first time in longer than I can calculate. Her breathing slows, each exhale a warm pulse against my collarbone, and I can feel her muscles relaxing incrementally, her body releasing the vigilance it maintains even in sleep, trusting me enough to go completely boneless against my frame.
This is unique.
Different from every encounter that came before it. Different from the mechanical proximity of one-night stands and the performed intimacy of hookups that served a biological function without nourishing anything beneath the surface. This is not transaction. This is not function. This is a woman who has neverhad a boyfriend choosing to fall asleep on my chest, and a man who has never stayed until morning deciding that leaving is not an option he is willing to consider.
I stay.
Still. Breathing steadily. My arm curled around her back, my hand resting against the curve of her waist where the jersey bunches against her hip. I dare to say I like this. The weight of another person against my body, not as an obligation to endure but as a comfort I did not know I was starving for. The gentle percussion of her heartbeat against my ribs, slightly off-rhythm from my own, the two pulses creating a syncopation that sounds like the beginning of a song neither of us has learned yet.
Her breathing evens out.
Slow. Deep. The unmistakable cadence of someone who has crossed the threshold into real sleep, the kind that erases consciousness and leaves the body to its own quiet maintenance. She is gone. Fully and completely, her grip on my shirt loosening as her hand relaxes into a warm, open palm against my sternum.
I stare at the ceiling.
The darkness above me is featureless, a blank canvas that my brain populates with the thoughts I have been avoiding all day. All week. All month, if I am being honest with myself, which apparently is the theme of the evening because honesty keeps ambushing me when my defenses are down.
