Chapter 25
I wake up warm.
That’s the first thing I notice.
Not the room. Not the unfamiliar ceiling.
Not the weight of a heavy arm draped low across my waist or the steady heat at my back or the fact that every inch of me feels used in the way that has absolutely nothing to do with regret and everything to do with being wanted too thoroughly to mistake it for anything else.
No.
It’s the warmth. Deep, bone-level, impossible warmth. And for one dangerously blissful second, before my brain catches up, I let myself stay there.
Still. Half-buried in sleep and the kind of quiet that feels earned. Then reality slams into me all at once.
I go rigid. Not because I regret last night.
That’s the worst part.
I don’t. Not even a little. I remember every second of it in flashes hot enough to make my pulse kick hard under my skin.
His mouth. His hands. The rough scrape of his voice against my ear. The look in his eyes when he told me if I chose him, I needed to understand exactly what that meant.
The sound of my own breathing when he gave me a choice and then actually meant it.
I remember his real name like it’s burned into me now.
Travis.
No one calls him that. No one. But he gave it to me anyway.
And I took it.
I took all of it. That should probably terrify me less than it does.
My stomach twists hard enough to feel nauseous. Not from regret. From the aftermath. From the unbearable weight of what it meant.
Because sex is one thing.
Sex can be heat. Impulse. Relief. A bad decision made in a vulnerable moment. What happened between us last night wasn’t that.
That’s the problem.
It mattered. Too much.
And now I’m in his bed with his arm around me like I belong here, and I don’t know what to do with the fact that some broken, reckless part of me wants to stay exactly where I am and never move again.
Panic starts low and climbs fast. Not a full spiral. Not like last night.
This is quieter. Colder.
The kind that starts in your chest and spreads until every thought feels sharp around the edges.
What did I do?
What happens now?
What if this changes everything?
What if it changes nothing?
What if he wakes up and realizes this was a mistake?
What if I already know it wasn’t one and that’s somehow worse?
My breathing goes shallow.
I hate it. I hate that my own body still does this to me. That even after a night that felt like the first honest thing I’ve had in years, my first instinct in the morning is still to brace for impact.
I try to move carefully. Slow enough not to wake him.
The second I shift, the arm around my waist tightens. Not hard. Not trapping. Just enough to let me know he’s awake.
My whole body goes still.
A beat passes.
Then his voice, rough with sleep and gravel and everything that makes it unfair before sunrise, hits the back of my neck. “You running?”
There’s no accusation in it.
No anger. No edge sharp enough to cut. Just…a question.
And somehow that’s worse.
Because if he’d sounded cold, or distant, or even vaguely awkward, I would know what to do with that.
This? This careful, half-asleep, unbothered version of him makes something in my chest pull painfully tight.
“No,” I say too quickly.
His arm loosens immediately. Not because he’s pulling away. Because he’s letting me.
That lands harder than I’m prepared for.
He doesn’t hold on tighter. Doesn’t demand I stay where I am. Doesn’t make a joke or turn this into something easier to survive by pretending it’s not heavy. He just gives me room.
And that nearly undoes me more than anything else could have.
I push up onto one elbow and glance back at him.
He’s already awake, dark eyes on me, hair a little rough from sleep, one arm tucked under his head and the other now resting loose over the sheet where it had been around me a second ago. He looks like a man who slept just fine.
Which is deeply unfair, considering I’m one bad thought away from emotional collapse.
“You can breathe,” he says quietly.
I stare at him.
He lifts one brow. “You’re doing that thing again.”
“What thing?”
“Trying to think yourself into a corner.”
The fact that he can already read that in me should concern me more than it does.
“I’m not—”
“You are.” His voice stays low and even. No judgment. No impatience. Just certainty.
I look away because if I keep looking at him, I might say something embarrassing and irreversible before I’ve had caffeine. Or emotional armor. Or literally any amount of distance from last night.
I swing my legs over the edge of the bed and sit there for a second, gathering the sheet around myself even though modesty feels a little ridiculous after the things we did to each other in this room.
Still. It gives my hands something to do.
The room is quiet around us, sunlight just beginning to edge around the curtains. His room smells like him and sleep and warm skin and something unmistakably us now, and that alone is enough to make my face heat.
God. This is humiliating.
Not because of what happened.
Because I liked it. Because I liked all of it. Because I’m sitting here trying not to visibly unravel while he looks completely at ease in the aftermath.
Maybe he senses where my head is going, because when he speaks again, his voice is softer than I expect from him this early in the morning.
“Raven.”
I look back.
He doesn’t move toward me. Doesn’t close the space. He just holds my gaze from where he’s still half-sprawled in bed and says, “You regret it?”
The answer is immediate. “No.”
His expression doesn’t change much, but something in his shoulders loosens anyway. “Then stop acting like you need to apologize for it.”
That one gets me. Because I hadn’t realized until he said it that some part of me absolutely had been gearing up to do exactly that. Not because I owe him an apology. Because I’ve spent too long cleaning up emotional messes that weren’t mine to begin with.
Too long trying to get ahead of fallout before it hits. And here he is, seeing it in under ten minutes and cutting it off before I can even fully lean into it.
I swallow hard. “I just…” I look down at my hands. “I didn’t expect it to feel like that.”
He’s quiet for a second. Then, “Like what?”
There are about a thousand answers to that and none of them feel survivable out loud.
So naturally, I go with the most useless one. “Big.”
That makes the corner of his mouth twitch. Not a smile. Close enough to count.
“Yeah,” he says. “It was.”
I laugh before I mean to. Just a short, startled little sound. The kind that escapes when something is too true to defend against. And somehow that breaks the tension more than anything else could have.
He pushes himself up then, the sheet slipping low across his hips, and I very deliberately keep my eyes on his face because I’m trying to have a functional morning and not immediately combust. Not that it helps much.
He notices. His mouth tilts a little more this time. “Morning, angel.”
That should not do what it does to me. And yet. My entire body remembers itself all over again.
I clear my throat. “You seem entirely too calm for this.”
He shrugs one shoulder. “Why?”
“Because I’m in your bed.”
“Yeah.”
I stare at him.
He stares right back. Then he adds, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, “That’s where I left you.”
I actually choke on a laugh this time.
He looks deeply pleased with himself.
Which is annoying. And somehow weirdly helpful. Because there’s no awkwardness in him. No weird distance. No masculine posturing or emotional retreat or sudden coolness because daylight hit and now everything has to be handled differently.
He’s just…him.
Still rough. Still steady. Still looking at me like last night didn’t scare him even a little.
That’s dangerous.
He swings his legs off the bed and stands, grabbing a pair of sweats from the chair near the wall and tugging them on without making a production out of it.
Then he glances toward the door. “You want coffee?”
I blink. “What?”
He looks back at me like I’m the one being strange. “Coffee.”
“You’re asking me that right now?”
“Seems useful.”
I don’t know what I expected.
A conversation. A reckoning. A little more existential crisis and a little less domestic competence.
Apparently that’s on me.
“Uh,” I say brilliantly. “Yes?”
“How do you take it?”
That catches me off guard in a completely different way.
“You don’t know?”
He gives me a look. “I know. I’m checking if its changed since you’ve had life altering sex.”
My mouth falls open.
He winks at me and then walks toward the door before I can recover enough to hit him with something. At the threshold, he pauses and looks back over one shoulder. “Get dressed,” he says. “I’ll make sure Lexi’s still running the fort.”
That stops me. Immediately. All the heat drains out of the moment and something much softer moves in.
“Lexi,” I say, sitting up straighter. “I should—”
“She’s fine.”
The certainty in his voice does something dangerous to my nervous system.
“She’s probably still asleep,” he adds. “Or terrorizing Gio with cartoons. Either way, she’s not being neglected.”
I stare at him.
He holds my gaze for one beat longer than necessary. Then, quieter, “I checked before I fell asleep.”
That one lands straight in my chest. Hard.
Because of course he did. Of course he made sure she was okay before he shut himself in here with me. Of course he thought about her too. That normal, practical, deeply unshowy kind of care nearly wrecks me on the spot.
I have to look away. “Okay,” I say softly.
He nods once and disappears into the hall.
The door shuts behind him. And I just sit there for a second in the wreckage of my own composure.
Because what the hell am I supposed to do with a man like that? One who doesn’t just know how to take me apart, but apparently knows how to put the room back together after too?
I get dressed slowly, pulling on yesterday’s jeans and top and trying not to think too hard about the fact that my body feels different this morning.
Not wrong. Not sore in any way that makes me want to hide. Just…marked.
Aware.
Like I’m carrying proof of last night under my skin.