Grounding.
“You eaten enough today?”
I thought about it.
“No.”
He nodded once.
“Okay.”
Uber eats had apparently followed us from one life into another, because twenty minutes later we were cross-legged in bed eating roasted chicken, fruit, and one ridiculous warm cookie from a tray balanced between us while the room stayed cool and quiet and safe.
He made me finish my electrolytes.
I made him stop checking his practice notes and eat like a person.
By the time the tray was gone and the alarm was set and my body had crossed fully into that heavy, blissed-out place beyond language, the only thing left in the world was the bed and him.
He slid in behind me after we turned the lights off.
No sex.
No teasing.
No reaching for more.
Just his body fitting to mine with that now-familiar inevitability, one arm under my neck, the other curved over my waist, both of us clean and sore and drowsy and wrapped in the soft dark.
I tucked myself back against him automatically.
He exhaled against the back of my shoulder.
“Better?”
I smiled into the pillow.
“Dangerously.”
He kissed the place just below my ear.
Then silence settled.
The good kind.
The kind that makes the room feel held.
Outside, some far-off bird called once.
A branch moved against glass.
The whole world receded until there was nothing but the cocoon of his arms and the deep, grateful ache of a body finally allowed to stop performing.
I don’t remember falling asleep.
Only waking once later with dusk blue at the edges of the curtains and Tristan still asleep behind me, breathing slow, his hand spread over my stomach like even unconscious some part of him needed to make sure I was still there.
I covered his hand with mine and went back under.
