But I am so tired of being sensible when my entire body is still remembering the way his mouth touched the parts of me I thought would always be untouchable.
So I lean back into him.
My cheek finds his chest, his heartbeat hitting my ear immediately, hard and uneven. His arm comes around my waist with no hesitation this time, pulling me closer until the cold still lingering in my skin starts to give way to his warmth. We sink together into the ruined sheets, damp and tangled, breathing each other in like we’ve both been underwater too long.
My forehead rests against his. The room shrinks to that point of contact.
For a while, neither of us speaks. The silence between us doesn’t feel empty. It feels loaded.
Eventually, the question I’ve been trying not to ask finds its way out anyway.
“When morning comes,” I whisper, “are you going to pretend none of this mattered?”
He doesn’t answer right away. His nose brushes mine once, lightly, almost absentmindedly, his jaw tightening before he finally speaks.
“No,” he says, his voice low enough that I feel it more than hear it. “Morning doesn’t make a lie out of what happened. It just makes people cowardly enough to deny it.”
The words settle into me like a slow bruise.
His arm tightens at my waist just slightly, not to hold me prisoner, only to make it clear he means what he says.
“And if I do what’s right tomorrow,” he continues, even quieter now, “it won’t be because tonight meant nothing. It’ll be because it meant enough to ruin us both.”
That lands somewhere so deep inside me I can’t even find the part of myself that wants to argue.
For the first time since he walked into my life, Silas doesn’t sound like a threat.
He sounds like an escape.
CHAPTER 12
Octavia
Bright morning light drags me out of sleep with no mercy at all.
For a few disoriented seconds, I lie there caught between warmth and ache, not fully in the room yet, not fully in myself either. Then the night comes back in pieces, each one sharper than the last. Kadin’s party. The kiss in the pool. The boy on the patio floor. Sirens. Silas’s hands on a chest that stopped rising. The drive home. His room. His mouth on my scars. The way he held me like I was something he wanted and something he was trying to protect himself from at the same time.
Silas.
My eyes open fully.
The bed is no longer shared. The sheets are twisted, damp in certain places, cold where his body used to be. His side is empty. For one strange second, disappointment hits before sense does.
I hate myself a little for it.
The clothes from last night are gone from the floor, but when I glance toward the hamper, I catch the dark shape of them tossed inside. Proof that I didn’t imagine any of it. Proof that I really did fall asleep in his bed with my cheek on his chest,listening to a heartbeat that sounded too alive for someone who had looked so broken only hours before.
The blanket slips slightly when I move, my gaze dropping to follow its movement.
Faint bruises bloom at my hips.
My breath catches.
The marks are subtle, but unmistakable, already darkening where his fingers had held me, where his hands had tightened just enough to leave evidence. Heat rushes through me all over again, sudden and mortifying, because the sight of them drags his mouth back into my mind with cruel clarity. The way he kissed low on my stomach like the scars there were not scars at all but something precious. The way the room had narrowed around his hands and breath and the unbearable slowness of him.
Dragging a hand through my hair, I sit up too fast, forcing air into my lungs.
Thinking becomes difficult when memory insists on being physical.
