For a moment, there was only the sound of the water and the shared drag of their breathing.
Then Nash shifted away, his hands lingering on her ass.
“I’m gonna make us somethin’ to eat,” he muttered.“All this goddamn work you’ve got me doin’ has me starvin’.”
Cassie pressed her forehead to the tile, breath still uneven, mind a mess with too much heat, too much history, too much…Nash.
God.Wanting each other had never been their problem.
It was everything after.The talking.The ways they hurt each other.The things they always left unfinished until they rotted between them.Even now, she wasn’t sure either of them knew how not to ruin it once the noise died down.
Except…maybe they were trying.
Yesterday had been full of surprises.From both of them.She hadn’t shoved anything down or locked it away.She’d let it tear through her instead, and Nash hadn’t tried to fix her or control what came next.He’d just held her while she felt her way through it.
Of course, this morning he’d said some really stupid shit, but even that paled compared to the garbage he used to spew.And—holy hel—he’d actually apologized.
“So now what,” she muttered, reaching for the faucet and shutting the water off.
Slowly.
Because she still didn’t know what they were doing—only that her feelings for Nash hadn’t really gone anywhere.Not really.If anything, they’d been lying in wait, patiently picking the perfect moment to blindside the living hell out of her.
Cassie pushed out of the shower, pulled a towel off the rack, and wrapped herself in it.
Back in the bedroom, she caught her reflection in the mirror and hesitated, touching the growing map of bruises along her neck—one, then another.When she opened the towel, there were more—on her breasts, the insides of her thighs.
God, she looked…absolutely manhandled.Felt it, too.Or, as Jordan loved to say, folded in half and guts rearranged.
She stood there longer than she meant to, wrapped in Nash’s scent, lips swollen, pussy throbbing—feeling all sorts of crazy.
Crazy because she didn’t just like the way she felt.
She liked how she looked, too.
Shut up, Cassie.
Snapping the towel closed, she turned away from the mirror, wondering if it was actually possible to have the sense fucked clean out of you.She had a life elsewhere.A whole amazing life that she absolutely adored.One she wasn’t about to forget just because she’d let herself…catch some fucking feelings.
She tugged on one of Nash’s old motocross shirts—one with a mercifully high neck—and a pair of his boxers before following the sharp smell of garlic into the hall and downstairs.
In the kitchen, Nash stood at the island counter, sleeves shoved up, tattooed forearms flexing as he chopped an onion into neat squares.The stove sat to his left, skillet already heating.His hair was tied back, his lip caught between his teeth while he worked.
It was so domestic.So ordinary.So utterly nothing.And yet, for one strange second, Cassie could see how easy a life like this could become.Waking up together.Showering together.Standing in a kitchen while breakfast cooked between them.
A ridiculous thought, she told herself.
Still, she didn’t shove it away fast enough.
“Since when do you cook?”she asked, leaning against the doorway.
Nash glanced up briefly before returning to the cutting board.
“Single dad,” he said.“It’s either cook or ride to the Rooster.”
Single dad.Right.
The elephant in the room they’d eventually have to deal with—if this turned into anything more than sleepovers and borrowed clothes and…oh my god, shut the actual fuck up, Cassandra Berry.
