A large arm rested across my back, heavy and relaxed. One of my legs was thrown over his hip. My face was pressed into the center of Liam’s chest, and I could hear the steady rhythm of his heartbeat beneath my ear.
Right.
Memory returned in a sequence that felt almost rude in its clarity.
The couch. The ice cream. The stupid reality show. The moment when everything tilted and never tilted back.
My stomach tightened.
I raised my head and looked at Liam. He was still asleep.
Up close, he looked younger. Not softer, but unguarded in a way he didn’t show when he was awake. His hair was a mess from my hands.
He had one hand spread across the middle of my back. The other rested loosely against my hip, fingers curved into my skin.
At some point during the night, I had migrated fully on top of him.
Excellent.
Outstanding decision making, Zoey.
I stayed still for another second, staring at the scar just below his collarbone. I had traced it last night.
I remembered telling him I wanted to make someone pay for it.
Which, in hindsight, was possibly a little intense.
My brain started running again.
That was the problem.
For the past two days it had been quieter than usual. My constant mental checklist had eased up, as had the running tally of everything I was responsible for.
Work tickets. Customer escalations. My mother’s increasing chaos. The constant sense that if I stopped paying attention for five seconds something in my life would catch fire. With Liam around, that had all faded to the background, and I barely heard the noise.
He checked things, and it wasn’t annoying when he did it. He noticed details and fixed problems before they became disasters. He paid attention to things I usually had to monitor myself.
I hadn’t realized how exhausting that constant vigilance was until someone else started carrying some of it without asking.
It explained why kissing him had felt less like a reckless decision, and more like the inevitable result of several days of my nervous system quietly surrendering to the concept of not being the only adult in the room.
I shifted slightly against him, and his arm tightened automatically, which made something uncomfortable happen inside my chest.
Fucking fantastic.
Attachment.
My favorite.
I closed my eyes briefly.
You absolute stupid bitch.
The words arrived with that casual cruelty my brain had perfected over the years.
You moved to a new town two minutes ago and immediately climbed into bed with the first extremely competent mountain man who offered you terrible breakfast.
Incredible strategy.
