Not the romantic part… the wounded part. The part that’s spent his whole life trying to be worth staying for.
"I’m not going anywhere," I tell him, and I mean it more than I want to.
His shoulders drop the rest of the way, like his body finally believes it. Within minutes, his breathing shifted into the deep, steady rhythm of real sleep.
I should move. I should slide out carefully and let him sleep alone.
I should maintain professional distance and emotional boundaries and all the other things I’ve always been good at. I should guard my heart from being ripped out of my chest again.
Instead, I settle back against the cushions, fingers threading gently through his hair, and let myself stay exactly where I am. Because for the first time in weeks, he's letting me in, and I'm too desperate for even one more minute with him this close.
Chapter Thirty-Five
LUKA
I wake slowly.
Not the way I normally do, where my body snaps to attention, and my mind follows a second later, already building the day into a list of tasks and reps and controlled movements. This is slower, heavier, like my brain is pushing through water, surfacing for air, and then sinking again before it fully understands where it is.
The first thing I feel is warmth under my cheek.
I shift slightly, and the warmth shifts with me, which is when my mind finally catches up enough to register that I’m not on my bed. I’m not even in a normal sleeping position. My head is angled wrong, my neck stiff, one arm curled around something that isn’t a pillow.
My eyes cracked open.
The room is dim in the early morning light, the blinds letting in thin strips of gray. I blink once, twice, because everything is still slightly out of focus, like my body is holding onto sickness as a punishment.
Then I realize what I’m holding.
Her.
My head is in Natalia’s lap.
My cheek is pressed against her thigh, and my arm is wrapped around her leg like I did it in my sleep and never let go. Like some part of me decided last night that if I loosened my grip, she would disappear and I’d wake up alone and humiliated on the bathroom tile again.
I don’t move for a long moment.
Natalia is slumped against the back of the couch, head tipped to the side, hair escaping her bun in messy strands. Her face is calm in sleep, but even asleep, she looks tired. Not the kind of tired you fix with a nap. The kind that sits behind the eyes after weeks of holding yourself together.
She can’t be comfortable. No one sleeps sitting upright like that unless they have a reason.
I stare at her, letting memory return in short waves.
The bathroom floor.
Her voice cut through the fog.
Hands on my shoulders, grounding me.
The cold cloth on my forehead.
The glass of blue water and her telling me I needed to drink it, like she could command my body into behaving.
And then… the part I almost don’t want to remember because it makes my chest feel too tight.
Just stay with me… please.
I asked.
