I close my eyes. And for the first time in longer than I can remember, I actually sleep.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Leah
I wake up in a bed that isn't mine.
It takes me a second, that disoriented pause where your brain hasn't caught up to your body, and you're lying in sheets that smell wrong.
Except they don't smell wrong.
They smell like cedar, laundry detergent and something warm underneath that I've been breathing in all night, and the reason they smell like that is because I'm in Coin's bed.
In Coin's house.
Wearing nothing but his sheets.
The other side of the bed is empty.
The pillow still has the indent from his head and the sheets are pulled back neatly—because of course they are, because this is a man who makes his side of the bed even when there's a woman still sleeping in it.
The thought makes me want to laugh and also makes my chest do something complicated that I'm not ready to name at six-thirty in the morning.
I lie there for a minute. Just lie there, staring at the ceiling of a room I've never been in before, processing.
The room is clean. Not bachelor-pad clean—actually clean.
No clothes on the floor, no dishes on the nightstand, no dust on the dresser.
There's a framed photo of the girls on his bedside table—Wrenleigh and Sadie Jo at what looks like a county fair, cotton candy in their hands, Wrenleigh mid-laugh and Sadie Jo giving the camera a shy half-smile.
Next to it, a phone charger, an alarm clock, and a worn paperback that I can't read the spine of from this angle.
That's it. That's the whole room.
A man's entire personal life in a twelve-by-twelve space: his daughters' faces, a book, and a bed that hasn't had anyone in it but him for longer than I want to think about.
Until last night.
Last night.
I press my face into his pillow and breathe, and the memories hit me in pieces—his hands on my hips, his mouth on my scar, the way he saidI've got youlike he meant it in every possible interpretation of the phrase.
The way he touched me like I was something he'd been thinking about for a long time and wanted to get right.
The sound of my name in his mouth.
I should be panicking.
I should be doing the thing I always do after I let someone get too close—the mental inventory of all the reasons this is a bad idea, the exit strategy, the emotional retreat back behind the walls I've spent twenty-eight years building.
I don't want to do any of that.
I want to walk into that kitchen and drink coffee with the man who held me last night and didn't let go, even after I stopped shaking.
I want to sit at his table in his shirt and watch him do whatever mundane morning thing he's doing—probably packinglunches for daughters who aren't even here—and I want it to feel exactly as easy as it sounds.
That terrifies me more than anything.
