“Okay,” she says. “Then we don’t do that again.”
It’s a lie. We both know it.
Because the line is gone, and even standing on opposite sides of the room, I can feel it—the pull, the awareness, the certainty that whatever this is, it didn’t end with that kiss.
It started there.
Now I have to protect her from the very thing she just unlocked.
Myself.
The rest of the night passes in careful choreography.
She disappears into the bathroom. The shower runs for a long time—long enough that I check the window twice, the door three times, anything to keep my hands busy and my mind off the water sliding down her skin.
When she emerges, she’s armored in an oversized T-shirt and sleep shorts. Wet hair dripping onto her shoulders. No makeup. No pretense.
She’s never looked more dangerous.
“I’m taking the left side,” she says. Matter-of-fact. Like we didn’t just detonate something between us.
“Fine.”
No pillows this time. Neither of us suggests it.
We lie in the dark, a foot of mattress between us that might as well be a minefield. The silence hums, thick with everything we’re not saying.
Her breathing eventually slows. Evens out. Sleep pulling her under.
Mine doesn’t.
Every shift of the sheets registers like a seismic event. Every soft exhale tightens the coil in my chest. Once, she rolls toward me, her hand landing on the neutral space between us, fingers curled loose in sleep.
I stare at that hand for twenty minutes.
I don’t touch it.
Around 3 AM, she murmurs something. A fragment. My name—the real one—tangled in a dream.
My hands fist in the sheets.
At 4, I give up on sleep entirely. I run security checks I’ve already run. Review exit routes I’ve already memorized. Count the cracks in the ceiling. Pump out several hundred pushups. Anything to keep from rolling toward her and finishing what we started.
The hours crawl past like wounded things.
TEN
“The Calm”
HALO
Morning comes without mercy.
Gray light seeps around the edges of the curtains, thin and cold, like it’s testing the room before committing. I’ve been awake for hours. Maybe I never really slept.
She’s still in the bed.
Not my bed anymore. Not after last night. Not after what I let happen.
