The way she gave herself to me without hesitation, without the armor she usually hides behind.
There were moments—soft ones—where she curled against my chest and traced the line of my collarbone with her fingertips while telling me about her lab, or her aunt’s obsession with her cousin’s extracurriculars, or how she never buys perfume because she dislikes strong scents and how her cousin fills her aunt’s apartment with a trendy body spray. She laughed into my skin and affectionately kissed my jaw. She let me hold her like this wasn’t temporary.
And I did hold her.
I didn’t want to stop.
Not once.
Which is why the guilt creeps in now, quiet and sharp, threading itself between every sweet memory of her mouth and her breath and her tiny sounds.
The bet.
The fucking bet.
She has no idea.
She has no idea she spent a weekend with a guy who started chasing her for all the wrong reasons. She has no idea she let me close before she knew the whole truth. She has no idea I said yes to something stupid in a room full of idiots before I knew her voice, her laugh, the way her body fits along mine, the way she looks at me like I’m not just Liam O’Connor’s younger brother or BU’s golden boy, but a real person.
She has no idea she trusted someone who doesn’t deserve it.
I slide into the driver’s seat and watch her settle in, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, adjusting her seatbelt, pulling her hoodie around her like she’s cold. Sheglances at me for a second—barely a heartbeat—but something warm flickers there. Soft. Open. Real.
And it hits me hard enough to make my fingers tighten on the steering wheel.
If she ever finds out this started as a bet, I’ll lose her.
Not because she’ll be humiliated.
Not because she’ll be angry.
Because it will break something in her. Something I’m already terrified of hurting.
She deserves better than the guy I was when this started.
She deserves the guy sitting in this car right now—the one who knows exactly what he’s risking. The one who knows she wouldn’t look at him this way if she knew the truth.
The guy who didn’t want to leave that bed at all, because for the first time in longer than I can admit, being close to someone felt like coming up for air.
I know that reaching for her again means stealing that air from her later.
“Kieran?” she asks softly.
I blink. “Yeah?”
“You’re staring.”
“Just thinking,” I say.
She studies me, head tilted, eyes narrowed like she’s trying to solve an equation. “About what?”
I lie without blinking. “Whether we should pick up real food before we get home.”
She nods right away. No suspicion. No hesitation. Just trust, easy and unguarded, like she’s already standing on my side of the storm.
And that’s the part that guts me.
The trust.
