He flinched. Not much. Just a twitch in his brow, the faintest shift in his shoulders. But I saw it. Felt it. And that small, involuntary response tugged at something deep inside me, something instinctual and anxious that whispered: this matters.
I slid off him, slowly, and pulled the sheet up with me as I lay on my side. The bed dipped with my movement, a hollow in the heat where our bodies had just been joined. I propped my head on my hand, studying him in the lowlight.
“What is it?” I asked, softer now.
He didn’t answer right away. His gaze drifted up toward the ceiling and I watched the muscles in his jaw flex, like he was chewing on something he didn’t want to swallow. Whatever it was, it wasn’t new. This was old pain. Buried pain.
“Have…Have you been married before?” I asked quietly, letting my eyes drift to the smooth column of his throat. There was no mark. At least none I could see. But something about the way he reacted made me wonder if he’d carried one once- and lost it. Or if the wound was invisible but just as deep.
“No,” he said, barely louder than a breath.
—
But it wasn’t just the word. It was the way he said it. Like the answer still hurt. Like it had taken something from him anyway.
And that–more than anything–made me ache.
I let the silence stretch between us, heavy and filled with questions I wasn’t sure I had the right to ask.
But I needed to know.
So I sat up and pulled the sheet over my chest. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” he said.
I looked at him levelly. “What were you doing in the hospital? When I met you?”
His eyes flicked to mine, unreadable. “I walked into the wrong room,” he said, voice carefully neutral.
A lie. I didn’t know how I knew it, but I did. Still, I let it go.
I looked down at my hands. “The reason I was in the hospital that day… Derek, I’ve had memory issues for years,” I admitted quietly. “And only one has stuck. Just one blank I can’t fill in.”
He was silent.
“I can’t remember my ex,” I said, and the air shifted like something unseen had stirred between us. “Not his face. Not his name. But I know he hurt me. Badly.”
I looked at him then. Really looked. The way his eyes had gone dark, the way his jaw clenched just slightly. Pain radiated off him, but it wasn’t defensive. It was something deeper. Rawer.
I misread it. Of course I did.
Because I thought that pain was for me.
“But that’s not you. You, you’re-” How did I encompass all the things he made me feel? All the things I knew him to be?
I leaned forward and kissed him, slow and soft. I felt him inhale sharply beneath me, his lips parting against mine.
When I pulled away, a single tear was sliding down his cheek.
My heart ached.
“And I know,” I whispered, voice thick with emotion, “that you would never hurt me.”
His breath caught.
Chapter 287
+25 BONUS
“We haven’t known each other long, I know,” I went on, feeling aswell rise in my chest, that same surge of rightness that had carried me through the past few days. “But I… I love you.”
The words slipped out before I could stop them. And I meant them Goddess, I meant them with every fiber of my being.
He didn’t say anything.
He didn’t have to.
The way he looked at me–like I was both salvation and punishment–said enough.
And for one breathless moment, I let myself believe we had forever.
