Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
DEVIN
Was it all a dream?
When I slowly drift into consciousness the next morning, that’s the first thought my brain seizes hold of. I can hear deep breathing close to me, and feel legs tangled with mine under the sheets.
Did I just dream the perfect date with the perfect guy followed by sex that rewrote my understanding of physical compatibility, or did that actually happen in real, documentable life?
I crack one eye open cautiously, like I’m afraid too much movement will make the illusion disappear. But Travis is in bed next to me. His dark hair is mussed up, his glasses are on the nightstand, and there’s a pillow crease across his left cheek.
The morning light catches the stubble on his jaw, and I have to physically restrain myself from making an undignified squeaking sound of pure joy.
This actually happened. He’s actually here. I actually get to keep this.
He’s just stirring, making these small grumpy noises like a disgruntled cat, his face scrunching up against the invasion of morning light.
Sleep-ruffled Travis is so adorable that I can’t help straddling him, placing a kiss on his nose.
“Hi,” I say.
“Let me guess, you’re one of those people who wakes up instantly and is full of energy,” he groans, putting a hand over his eyes.
“Yep, that’s me.” I plant a gentle kiss on his lips this time. “And I’m guessing you’re someone who struggles to be remotely coherent and is grumpy until they get caffeine into their bloodstream.”
I give another teasing kiss, then withdraw.
He opens his eyes to blink at me. Then he surges up to capture my mouth, and we’re kissing properly, morning-slow and thorough, like we have all the time in the world. He tastes like sleep and possibility, and his hands come up to cradle my face gently.
“I can wake up fast for the right incentives,” he says when he finally pulls back.
“Good to know.”
I grind my morning erection against his, and we both groan at the friction, already getting lost in each other again.
We break apart just long enough for me to duck into the bathroom. When I come back, Travis has kicked off the sheets entirely and is watching me with dark eyes and a condom packet in his hand.
“Efficient,” I say, climbing back onto the bed.
“I’m an engineer. We plan ahead.”
We’re slower and more deliberate than last night. It’s a question-and-answer session between our bodies, discovering all the places that make each other gasp and sigh.
There’s stroking and tenderness and the discovery of Travis’s beautiful broken moan when I suck a mark into his collarbone, and that he whispers my name like it’s the only word he remembers.
It’s moving together in the morning light, unhurried and unguarded, writing promises on each other’s skin with fingertips and mouths.
Travis opens me slowly, savoring each gasp, each shiver, until we’re both trembling with want.
Then I’m on top of him, sinking down onto him, feeling the stretch as he fills me inch by inch. We both hold our breath, eyes locked, suspended in this moment.
His hands grip my hips and his eyes are so soft it almost hurts to look at him.
When I’m fully seated, he reaches up to brush hair from my forehead with trembling fingers, and something in my chest cracks wide open.
And then I begin to move.
I’ve had sex before. But I’ve never had sex where every single nerve ending feels like it’s been rewired to amplify the sensations. Where the slide of skin against skin feels like a conversation I’ve been waiting my whole life to have.
It’s intertwined fingers and soft kisses, like we’re sharing secrets in a language only we understand. He strokes me as I set the pace, and the dual sensation narrows my entire existence down to him, to us, to this.
His hands slide up my thighs, gripping my hips as I settle into a rhythm that makes us both gasp.
I brace my hands on his chest. His heart slams against my palm.
The pleasure builds in slow, rolling waves. Every time I sink down, sparks shoot up my spine. His thumb finds my hip bone, stroking circles, and somehow that small touch undoes me more than anything else.
“God, you’re perfect,” Travis says, voice rough.
I want to say something clever back, but my brain has officially gone offline. All I can do is feel—the stretch of him inside me, the heat of his skin, the way his breathing goes ragged when I change the angle.
We speed up, chasing something inevitable. The coil in my belly tightens. My thighs tremble.
“Travis—” His name comes out of my mouth broken.
“I know,” he rasps. “I’ve got you.”
He speeds up his stroking and tightens his grip slightly, and that’s all it takes. I shatter, pleasure ripping through me so intensely I forget how to breathe. I hear him groan my name as he follows, feel him pulse inside me, and the intimacy of it is almost too much.
I slump against his chest, completely boneless.
We lie there, breathing hard, sweat cooling on our skin, his heartbeat gradually slowing under my cheek.
He tips my face up to kiss me. It’s gentle. Almost reverent.
And then we just keep kissing. Slow, soft kisses that feel like they’re saying things we don’t have words for yet. Like we’re both marveling at the fact that this exists. That we exist.
I never want to stop.
Eventually, we do the cleaning up thing, and Travis pulls me to him.
His thumb traces my cheekbone as he studies my face. “I’ve never felt like this before,” he says, and my heart catches in my throat.
“Like what?” I ask.
His jaw tightens, then releases, and he lets out a long breath before he answers. “Like I want to skip to the part where I already know everything about you, but also slow down so this moment doesn’t end.”
Oh my god. He’s just put into words exactly how I’m feeling.
It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell him that I’ve been moderating love stories for years, wanting to believe one could happen to me.
That I’d started to wonder if maybe TruthGuardian was right, that the connections in the stories are exaggerated, embellished, impossible.
But here’s Travis, saying exactly what I’ve always hoped someone would feel about me.
But I’m so choked up that “Ditto” is all I manage to get out before I have to kiss him again.
And for a long while, that’s enough. Just kissing lazily, breathing together, existing in this small, perfect bubble we’ve somehow created.
Our stomachs eventually remind us that they need to be fed, so we untangle ourselves and stumble out to his kitchen for breakfast.
“You take your coffee black, don’t you?” I guess as Travis pulls mugs from the cupboard.
“How could you possibly know that?”
“Black coffee fits the profile.”
He throws me a grin. “And you take lots of milk and sugar in yours, am I right?”
“Two sugars, actually.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Two sugars is basically coffee-flavored candy.”
“And black coffee is basically liquid disappointment pretending to be sophisticated. We all have our crosses to bear,” I reply.
And we’re grinning at each other, and I have that thrill of recognition again.
The same one I felt when I saw him in the restaurant.
Only now it feels like I’ve somehow stumbled into a domestic dynamic I’ve been waiting my whole life to experience.
Morning banter and easy teasing with someone who gives as good as he gets.
The kind of connection where even mundane moments like standing in a kitchen, debating coffee, feel like the best parts of a love story.
But when Travis hands me my coffee, I almost drop the mug.
Because I know this mug. I have the exact same one in my kitchen.
It’s a white ceramic with gold lettering that reads Be the light that helps others glow with stars scattered around the rim.
It’s the Christmas present the operators of ShareYourGlow sent their moderators last year.
I raise my eyes back to Travis’s head. He’s gone to the fridge now, and is getting out cherry tomatoes and mushrooms, laying them on the cutting board like he’s prepping for a cooking show segment.
Travis is a moderator for ShareYourGlow? Oh my god, it’s yet another thing we have in common.
What lightbeam does he monitor? Maybe he moderates one of the achievement lightbeams: PersonalBests, where people share their marathon times, or GraduallyGettingThere for weight loss journeys.
That would track with his analytical nature, verifying times and checking before-and-after photos for consistency.
Or could it be RandomActsofAwesome, where people post about strangers helping them? He’d probably be great at fact-checking whether someone really did pay for twenty cars behind them at the drive-through.
I’m about to open my mouth and ask him when a meowing noise distracts me.
I look out the window to see a fluffy ginger cat standing at the patio door, demanding entrance.
“I didn’t realize you have a cat,” I say as I go to the patio door.
Travis looks up from where he’s chopping mushrooms to follow my gaze.
“I don’t. I have a neighbor’s cat who demands treats in exchange for leaving me alone. It’s really just an extortion arrangement,” he says.
My hand stills on the door. Because what he’s just described to me sounds familiar.
The room tilts sideways as my stomach swirls.
It can’t be… There’s no way…
I mean, the odds are almost impossible, right? There must be hundreds of moderators for ShareYourGlow. I’m sure TruthGuardian would be able to calculate the statistical probability of two ShareYourGlow moderators from the same subforum meeting in real life because one of their brothers set them up.
But, even as I try to dismiss it, I can’t help thinking about the conversation we had last night. There was something familiar about it, wasn’t there? Not the words we spoke, but the pattern of bouncing off each other.
Like we’d instantly settled into a groove we were both familiar with. Talking to Travis is definitely similar to messaging TruthGuardian online.
I raise my gaze to him now to find him frowning at me.
“Are you allergic to cats? I can give him his treat outside if you want.”
He’s trying to figure out why I’m reacting this way.
“No, I’m not allergic to cats,” I say slowly. “What’s the cat’s name?”
“Ernest Hemingpaw. Which is a ridiculous name for a cat, if you ask me.”
Holy shit. Holy shit.
He’s definitely TruthGuardian. I’m sitting in TruthGuardian’s kitchen. The cynical, spreadsheet-obsessed, romance-debunking TruthGuardian is Travis.
This can’t be real. This is too perfect to be real.
This is a story that even I would agree isn’t plausible. Yet here we are.
I’m so happy I’m almost delirious with it.
This is my argumentative, cynical, endlessly frustrating online nemesis who once rated the believability of every romantic trope on a scale of “potentially plausible” to “someone’s creative writing exercise.
” The man who said that people who believe in “the one” are just “too lazy to acknowledge the mathematical probability of multiple compatible partners.”
This is the man who has debunked hundreds of love stories with the determination of a detective solving cold cases.
How is he going to react when he’s faced with irrefutable evidence that he’s living inside his own ultra-romantic meet-cute?
I open the door to let Ernest Hemingpaw in, and he immediately trots over to Travis, meowing imperiously and winding between his legs. Travis reaches for a treat, holding it out to the cat with two fingers. The cat takes it delicately, and the corner of Travis’s mouth twitches.
“Don’t get used to this,” he mutters, giving the cat a scratch behind the ears.
Meanwhile, I pick up my phone.
Time to have some fun.