Neither of them spoke.
Sloane stared up at the ceiling, her fingers gently trailing shapes across Catherine’s stomach.
She tilted her head to look at her.
Catherine’s eyes were open, fixed on the ceiling too. Her mouth was parted slightly, her brow relaxed.
Sloane didn’t need to say anything.
This wasn’t a night of declarations.
Catherine's hand was still resting against Sloane’s chest, her palm warm, open. There was no retreat in her body. No armor clamped down across her spine. Just her, bare in every sense of the word, lying there in the quiet aftermath of something more than desire.
The city moved on outside the windows, horns blaring as people’s lives passed by. But in the quiet of Catherine’s bedroom, something enormous had shifted.
She hadn’t just let Sloane in.
She’d asked to stay.
Sloane felt Catherine’s weight draped half across her body, her breath steady and slow, eyes closed but not asleep. Her cheek pressed to the space just below Sloane’s collarbone, where her heartbeat thrummed softly. The room was dark save for the gentle glow of the bedside lamp, casting a gold halo across the sheets and the curve of Catherine’s bare shoulder.
Sloane’s fingers moved absently through her hair, tangling and untangling the dark strands. It should’ve felt perfect, but herchest ached, just a little, with the weight of everything she hadn’t said.
Catherine didn’t ask, but maybe that was why Sloane finally spoke.
“I used to think I loved people too fast,” she said, her voice quiet in the hush of the room. “Like there was something wrong with me. Like needing someone, seeing them too clearly, wanting too much too soon meant I was some kind of warning sign.”
Catherine didn’t move, but Sloane felt the faint press of her fingers against her ribcage as she listened.
“They’d say it like it was this flaw I couldn’t fix. That I was too open. Too intense. Too loud. Too ready to care.”
Her fingers paused, then resumed even softer.
“But with you, it’s not fast,” Sloane whispered. “It’s inevitable.”
The silence that followed wasn’t heavy. It was honest and whole.
Catherine didn’t rush to fill it or shift away. She simply reached up, cupping Sloane’s face with a hand that still smelled faintly of lavender soap and wine. Her thumb brushed across her cheekbone. Then, as if pulled by something, she leaned up and pressed a kiss, soft and steady, to the corner of Sloane’s mouth.
When she pulled back, her eyes met Sloane’s. There were no declarations, no dramatic promises. Just the raw sincerity in the way she whispered her name.
And somehow, it was enough.
Sloane let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding and pulled Catherine closer. They lay like that for a long time, wrapped around each other, until the lamplight flickered and finally went dark.
Sloane woke to the sound of quiet, the kind of quiet that only existed just before dawn, when the world was still, the city hadn’t stirred, and time moved like honey.
She blinked slowly, eyes adjusting to the gentle gray light that bled in through the curtains. Catherine was still asleep, her body curled into Sloane’s, one leg tangled lazily with hers, one arm slung across her waist like she didn’t intend to let go.
Sloane didn’t move. She couldn’t have, even if she’d wanted to.
There was something sacred in the moment. The way the morning light curved around the edge of the bed. The way Catherine’s lashes fanned out across her cheeks. The way her breathing made the sheets rise and fall in rhythm with Sloane’s chest.
She stared at the ceiling for a long time, her fingers brushing lightly over Catherine’s spine, not to wake her, just to feel her there. Solid, warm, still here.
I didn’t want her to change,Sloane thought.I just wanted her to stay. And now, maybe…she might.
Catherine stirred against her, mumbling something incoherent as she shifted. Her nose nuzzled against Sloane’s neck, her lips brushing warm skin.
