Page 17 of My Girl to Ruin

Something quiet settles in my chest that I don’t have a name for and don’t intend to find one for. I shut it down.

She stirs. Presses closer without waking, her fingers tightening briefly against my chest.

I slide a hand up to her jaw and tilt her face up, my thumb brushing lightly across her lower lip. Her lashes flutter.

“Tatum,” I murmur, my voice low, rough from sleep.

She hums softly, still mostly under.

“Wake up,” I say, quieter this time.

Her eyes open slowly, unfocused at first, then land on me. Recognition hits. Then warmth. A smile tugs at her lips before she’s fully conscious of it.

“Morning,” she whispers. Then, barely awake, barely voiced: “Morning, Daddy.”

And she doesn’t blush this time. Doesn’t catch herself. It just comes out of her like it’s been hers all along.

I kiss her for a long time. Slow, unhurried, nothing behind it but wanting to. She melts into it, warm and pliant, one leg sliding over mine. It turns into something else the way it was always going to, but gentler than last night. Softer. Her hands stay in my hair the whole time, and I let them.

Afterward, she’s boneless and laughing at nothing.

Then she blinks. Her eyes cut to the clock.

“Oh my God.” The words come out sharp, panicked as she jerks upright. “I’m so late,” she says, already scrambling out of bed, grabbing for her clothes in a rush that makes her movements clumsy. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

A laugh breaks out of me before I can stop it. It’s rough, unfamiliar, out before I know it’s coming.

She freezes mid-motion, turning to stare at me like she’s never heard that sound before. My smile fades quickly, but the echo of it lingers in my chest as I push myself up on one elbow, watching her rush around the room, half-dressed and flustered.

“I tried,” I say dryly.

She glares at me, cheeks still flushed, hair a mess around her shoulders. “That doesn’t count.”

Another small huff of laughter escapes me, quieter this time. For a second, it almost feels normal.

She finishes dressing, grabs her bag, and waves from the door. “See you later.”

I smile and grunt in response.

The door clicks shut, but whatever she leaves behind doesn’t go with her. It lingers, in the sheets twisted around my legs. In the air. In how heavy the quiet lands once there’s nobody in it.

***

It wasn’t supposed to go like this.

I told myself I’d hold her at arm’s length. I lasted about a week.

Not because she wore me down. That’s the part I keep turning over. After that night in her dorm, she never asked me for a single thing—never pushed, never engineered a reason to be in front of me. She just kept showing up and leaving the decision on the table where I could reach it.

So I reached.

I’m the one who asked her to stay the first time. I’m the one who cleared out a drawer. I’m the one texting her at eleven at night when the apartment gets too quiet. I'm the one who drove out to campus on a Tuesday because she mentioned in passing she’d be walking back after dark.

Three weeks go like that.

She’s here most nights now, curled up in my bed like it’s hers. And I let her. Worse than that—I want her there.

Because it stopped being about the physical somewhere I didn’t notice. It’s the way she talks to me. The way she looks at me like I’m still someone worth knowing, like the last four years didn’t strip something essential out of me.