Callum Hayes spooned.
The man who alphabetized his architecture books by sub-genre, who ironed his pocket squares, who drank his coffee black as a moral stance—that man curled around me in his sleep with the possessiveness of a person who'd forgotten how to let go.
It did things to me every single morning.
I lay still, noting the details I'd been accumulating over three days of waking up next to him. He ran warm. His left hand always ended up on my stomach, palm flat, fingers spread. He made a sound in his sleep—not a snore, not a groan, more of a low rumble that vibrated against my spine. His legs were long enough that his feet hung off the edge of the mattress, which I found unreasonably endearing for a man who'd designed buildings to accommodate human proportions.
His alarm would go off at five-forty-five. He'd shower, dress, make coffee in that French press he treated with the reverence of a holy artifact, and be out the door by six-thirty with the Swiss-clock punctuality that should've annoyed me.
And realizing that despite starting his day with coffee in the privacy of his kitchen had never stopped him from stopping by my shop to get another black coffee made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
I checked my phone. Five-twenty-three. Twenty-two minutes before his alarm. I had two options: slip out, shower, maintain the illusion that I was a person who didn't drool in her sleep. Or stay. Exist in this warm pocket of bed and man and the particular luxury of being held by a person who wanted to hold me.
I stayed.
Behind me, Callum stirred. His arm tightened. His mouth found the curve where my neck met my shoulder, pressed a kiss there—still mostly asleep, operating on autopilot, which made it better. The conscious kisses were devastating. The unconscious ones were annihilating.
"Morning," I said.
A sound against my skin. Not a word. An acknowledgment of my existence rendered in vibration. Then: "What time is it?"
"Early. Go back to sleep."
"Can't." His hand slid from my stomach to my hip. "You're here."
"I've been here all night. That didn't stop you from snoring."
"I don't snore."
"You have a deviated septum's opinion of yourself."
His laugh was a rumble against my spine. He pulled me tighter, and I let myself be pulled, and for five minutes we lay there in the gray pre-dawn of his ridiculous apartment while the city woke up around us.
This was the part nobody warned you about. Not the sex—though, God, the sex was a revelation I was still processing—but the mornings. The ordinary, half-conscious, bad-breath-and-bedhead mornings when a person chose to hold you before either of you hadassembled your public selves. This was where the real danger lived. In the tenderness of a man who kissed your shoulder before he opened his eyes.
Callum Hayes was going to ruin me. Not with grand gestures or expensive gifts or the kind of cinematic declarations that made good Instagram captions. With this. With mornings. With the quiet, accumulating evidence that he wanted me here—not as a performance, not as a prop for Richard Ashford's benefit, but as a permanent fixture in the architecture of his day.
I was in so much trouble.
His alarm went off. He reached over me to silence it—his body pressing into mine in a way that was unfair at five-forty-five in the morning—and then he was up. Shower running. The muffled sounds of a man with a routine so ingrained it functioned on autopilot.
I sprawled into the warm space he'd vacated, starfished across his absurdly large bed, and grabbed my phone.
Three texts from Mika.
5:02 AM: you alive? 5:04 AM: or has mr. silver fox literally screwed you into another dimension 5:07 AM: if you don't respond by 6 I'm calling a welfare check
I typed back:Alive. Very alive. Possibly too alive. My nervous system has been permanently recalibrated.
Her response was instant.DETAILS. NOW. Scale of 1-10 how good.
I stared at the ceiling. Thought about last night—Callum's mouth on my neck, his hands anchoring my hips, the way he'd said my name at the end as though it were the only syllable that mattered.
Eleven, I typed. Then deleted it. Then typed it again and hit send before I could overthink.
Mika's response was seventeen exclamation points followed by a GIF of a woman fanning herself.
I'm happy for you, she sent a moment later. You deserve this. Also I need a full debrief at work tomorrow but for now just enjoy it you disaster of a human being.
