I glanced around the room, expecting to see chaos, but the space was still itself: furniture lined up perfect, clothes folded in their baskets, boots squared to the wall. Only the bed was ruined—covers thrown off, sheets twisted, the mattress half pulled from the frame. The mess didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would.
I lay back and watched the ceiling. The fan blades were still. I could feel every beat of Ransom’s pulse in the wrist draped over my heart. The urge to get up and fix something was powerful, but it couldn’t compete with the deeper urge to stay right here, to see what it would feel like to wake up with him still holding on.
I’d spent my life building routines and rules, thinking that if I contained everything, nothing could hurt me. But in one night, Ransom had made a liar out of me. He’d shown me that surrender was a kind of freedom, that letting someone else set the pace didn’t mean losing yourself. Sometimes it meant finding something you didn’t know you wanted.
I watched him sleep. I watched the slow dawn begin to lighten the window, the faint promise of morning. I should have been thinking about the fallout, about what this meant, about how to hide it from a town that chewed up secrets and spat them out for fun.
But all I could think about was his hand on my skin, and how I already missed it when he shifted away. I closed my eyes, but sleep wouldn’t come. I lay awake, and waited for him to wake up and tell me what came next.
Chapter Eight
~ Ransom ~
I always wake up first. It’s a habit from years of sleeping in strange beds, always prepared to bolt, always prepared for the wrong person to walk in. Even after a night like last night—a night that I’d have bet my right hand would leave me dead to the world until noon—I still came awake before the light did.
Floyd was next to me, mouth slack and breathing slow, every line of his body loose in a way I’d never seen. Not even when he was pretending to relax.
I took a minute to study the face he usually guarded like evidence in a locked file: the jaw a little softer without the day’s tension, lashes long and, weirdly, almost delicate for a man who could pop my head like a grape with his bare hands. His hair was a mess. I’d done that. I felt a stab of pride, then something worse.
I reached out and brushed a thumb along his eyebrow, following the ridge down to the bridge of his nose. I waited for him to stir, but he didn’t. I let my fingers trace his cheekbone, then his mouth, remembering how it had felt biting down on mine, the soft and the sharp of it, the way it broke open and then let me in.
Last night had been everything and nothing like what I’d pictured. I’d fantasized about breaking him open for years, but the reality was more like opening a vault that didn’t just have treasure, but actual heart.
He’d given up control so completely, so fast, that it almost scared me. I thought I’d have to fight him every inch. I thought I’d have to drag surrender out of him. Instead, he’d practically begged for it. The memory left a pressure in my chest, hot and slow, like I’d swallowed a coal.
I watched him sleep, daring myself to believe this was real. That he was real, that the world hadn’t gone back to zero at sunrise. I slid out of bed, careful not to wake him, and padded barefoot down the hall. The carpet was stiff, probably vacuumed within an inch of its life, but the kitchen was the kind of clean that only comes from someone who needs things to stay in their place.
I found the coffee without looking. He kept his beans in a sealed jar, filters stacked like origami, mugs lined up by height. The first two had police department logos, but the third was a chipped blue one with a river valley painted on the side, the kind of thing you buy at a gas station because you don’t want to risk your real mug getting stolen at work.
I took that one and set it down with a thunk. The sound startled me. For a second, I thought about how out of place I should feel, how out of place I usually did. But I didn’t. Not here, not in the house that reeked of him.
I ground the beans by hand, savoring the simple violence of it, then set the machine going. The smell bloomed out, sharp and bitter, a reliable promise. I wondered if he’d wake to it, or if I’d have to bring a cup to the bedroom and spill it on the sheets just to see what he’d do.
I stood at the window while the coffee brewed, watching the sunrise drag color over the street. Out here, in the little subdivision where everyone’s lawn was the same length and the houses were just different enough to pretend they weren’t identical, you could almost believe you had a shot at something like normal. I pictured myself as one of those husbands on the block, sipping coffee in the driveway, nodding at neighbors, not even a blip on anyone’s radar. The idea made me want to laugh, but it also made me want to scream.
The machine clicked off. I poured two mugs, black, because I knew he wouldn’t take it any other way. I leaned againstthe counter, sipping, letting the acid sit on my tongue. I was halfway through my cup before I heard his footsteps, heavy and deliberate.
He came in shirtless, sweatpants riding low on his hips, a long stripe of my teeth marks fading on his neck. His hair looked like it had lost a fight with a leaf blower, and his eyes were half-lidded, still soft at the edges. For a second, he didn’t see me; he just went for the coffee, poured himself a cup, and took it down in three long gulps.
When he turned, he saw me watching.
“Morning,” he said. His voice sounded like it’d been sandblasted.
I let my eyes drag down his body, then back up. “Didn’t take you for a morning person.”
He shrugged, coming over to the table. “I’m not.” He settled in across from me, arms folded, mug tight in both hands. “But you made coffee. I could smell it.”
I grinned. “I almost put in sugar, just to see if you’d die.”
He snorted, then sipped again. The silence was thick but not uncomfortable. In fact, it felt more like a challenge: who would break first and talk about last night?
He shifted, and his leg bumped mine under the table. He left it there. I wondered if he even noticed. “I usually go for a run,” he said, staring at his coffee. “Keeps the dreams from sticking around.”
I let that one hang, then nodded. “You want me gone before the neighbors see?”
He frowned, but it wasn’t annoyance. “No. I just—don’t know what you want. Or what you’re expecting.”
I looked at him for a long time. “Honestly? Not sure. This isn’t my usual routine.”
