I stare at the spot where she’d been, already missing her warmth, and tell myself for the thousandth time that a platonic friendship is better than giving her up.
I push myself upright and smooth my hair down to compose myself before she returns. My phone is on the end table where I left it. I check the time—7.38a.m. Should I leave before she comes back? Spare us both the awkward morning-after conversation when we didn’t even have a proper night-before anything.
But I’m not a coward; I don’t run away. So I wait, wondering what I could do to let her know it’s not a big deal.
I glance around the living room, awash in the fresh morning light. It feels different somehow, more intimate now that I’ve spent the night, even if it was an accident. This couch knows the feel of our bodies together. These walls have witnessed us vulnerable in sleep.
I should regret it, should apologize, but all I can think is: I want more mornings like this.
I can’t tell her that. But I can make her breakfast as any non-awkward friend would. I’ll smile and make jokes. I’ll be her friendly neighbor until she’s ready for something more.
Or until I accept that she never will be.
11
LILY
I’m having a low-key panic attack on my bathroom floor, holding my knees pressed to my chest to make myself as small as possible—or to keep from falling apart. I don’t even know. The cold of the tiles seeps through my leggings, but I barely register the discomfort. I lean on the door behind me while my lungs remember how to process oxygen.
All because I used Josh Collins as my personal comfort mattress.
The memory of our awkward awakening sends another wave of mortification crashing through me. It’s not the first time I’ve woken up on a very male, solid chest. For one disorienting second, my sleepy brain whispered Daniel’s name to me, and my heart leaped with that old familiar joy before reality snuffed it down.
Daniel didn’t smell like beaches and summer. Even living in California, he was all winter forest—pine and cedarwood and that stupid cologne I bought him for our first Christmas together that he wore until the day he died.
That’s when I realized I was sleeping on Josh. Not Daniel. Josh, who smells like coconut and sunshine.
Jerking up and finding those impossibly blue eyes staring back at me, still soft with sleep, shattered me. The worst part was that in those first few seconds, before panic took over, I’d felt… comfortable. Safe. Like I belonged with my head tucked under his chin and our limbs tangled together.
And that feeling—traitorous and wonderful—sent me scrambling off him, jolted as if I’d been electrocuted. Now I’m hiding like a coward while he’s sitting on my couch probably wondering what the hell is wrong with me.
I drop my forehead to my knees and groan. Whatiswrong with me? We didn’t do anything. We fell asleep watching a movie. Friends do that all the time, right? Completely innocent.
Except nothing about the way my body responded to his feels innocent. My insides are too gooey and too sharp at once. My heart can’t decide if it wants to race out of my chest or stop. The poor organ becomes even more malfunctioning as my gaze drops to that chipped tile on the floor that Daniel sealed a few days before he died. A weird resentment takes over.
I’ve spent four years rebuilding my life after Daniel, focusing on Penny, on work, on surviving. And in less than a week, Josh Collins has walked into my carefully constructed existence and turned everything upside down. Making me laugh. Fixing my sink. Hiking with me. Falling asleep under me. Awakening feelings that shake me out of my numbness but that I resent.
I press the heels of my hands against my eyes until I see stars. This is ridiculous. I’m a grown woman, a nurse, a mother. I deal with life-and-death situations every day. I can handle waking up on top of a guy I barely know—a very hot guy who has a killer smile and the same job as my dead husband.
I can’t look at him and not see the uniform, the danger, the possibility of losing someone again. I could never put Penny through that pain again. I can’t. I won’t. It doesn’t matter if he made me laugh until my abs hurt yesterday. I can’t have him. But I also can’t let him go.
I wish I could be mad at him. But Josh is just a guy who enjoys fixing things and tells terrible jokes and probably holds doors open for old ladies and wants to spend time with me for some reason.
“Pull yourself together, Lily,” I mutter, dropping my hands and taking a deep breath. “You’re acting insane.”
I push myself up from the floor, my legs protesting after being cramped in one position. In the mirror above the sink, my reflection stares back at me—wild-eyed, hair a tangled mess, cheeks flushed. A woman on the verge of a breakdown.
I splash cold water on my face and pull my hair up in a ponytail. A minute alone is all I need, then I can face Josh and tell him we’ll meet up later to go to the pier.
With one final deep breath, I unlock the bathroom door and step into the hallway. The apartment is quiet except for… Wait. Is that the sound of pans clattering in my kitchen?
I hurry down the hall, my stomach folding in tighter with each step. As I round the corner, my blood turns to ice.
Josh is standing at my stove, cracking eggs into a bowl. He’s barefoot, hair tousled into post-sleep disarray, humming to himself like he belongs in my space.
“What are you doing?” My tone is harsh—too harsh, laced with a coldness that surprises me.
Josh turns, that goofy smile that melts me spreading across his face. But this time, it only fuels the rage building inside me.
