Chapter 25: Liam
Iwoke up to Alex's alarm.
Not an alarm—ameditation app. Some woman with a British accent saying "Good morning. Take a deep breath and set your intention for the day" over soft piano music.
I opened one eye.
"What the fuck is that?"
Alex reached over me—his chest pressing against my shoulder, warm and solid—and grabbed his phone from the nightstand. Silenced it.
"My morning routine," he said.
"Your morning routine has a British lady in it?"
"She helps me center."
"She sounds like she's trying to sell me tea."
Alex dropped back onto the pillow. We were tangled together my leg between his, his arm across my chest, the covers pulled up to our waists. The room was grey with early morning light filtering through the tall windows. The cold pressed against the glass but under the blankets, with Alex's body heat radiating into mine, it felt like the safest place in the world.
He was looking at me. That soft, unguarded expression I'd only started seeing recently—no mask, just Alex. Eyes still half-asleep and a pillow crease running down his left cheek.
"What?" I asked.
"Nothing. Just—" He stopped. "You're in my bed."
"Been here all night."
"I know. I just—" A small smile. Almost shy, which was insane on someone who rowed for Kingswell and told his father to go to hell. "It's nice. Waking up with you."
Something warm bloomed in my chest. I tried to crush it because that was my instinct—crush anything that felt too good, too vulnerable, too much like something I couldn't afford to lose.
But I was tired of crushing things.
"Yeah," I said. "It is."
His smile got wider. I looked away because if I kept staring at him I was going to say something stupid. Like how the morning light made his eyes look almost silver. Or how the pillow crease on his face was somehow the most attractive thing I'd ever seen on another person.
"Your room is freezing," I said instead.
"The radiator's broken. Maintenance put in a ticket three weeks ago."
"At Riverside they'd just give us an extra blanket and tell us to deal with it."
"At Riverside the whole building is a maintenance ticket."
"Watch it, golden boy."
He grinned. Full and real. And God, that grin—I felt it in my stomach.
I shifted, trying to get comfortable, and something crunched under my hip. I reached down and pulled out a rowing magazine that had gotten wedged between the mattress and the wall.
"Do you sleep with reading material?"
"It must have fallen off the nightstand."
"US Rowing Monthly." I flipped it over. "You subscribe to a rowing magazine? In print?"
