Chapter 42 Bellamy
BELLAMY
The room is too small for three people who refuse to relax.
The bed takes up most of it—full-sized at best, pressed against one wall beneath a window that looks out on nothing but scrub and darkness.
The mattress sags slightly in the middle, like it’s already given up on pretending it can support more than one body.
The headboard creaks if you breathe too hard.
The sheets smell like detergent and dust and the faintest trace of someone else’s cologne, old and generic.
Across the room, the recliner looks worse for wear.
The fabric is threadbare at the arms; the footrest jammed at a stubborn angle that refuses to fully lock into place.
Bishop dragged it closer to the wall without comment, like claiming territory, then sat down and immediately looked irritated that gravity still applied to him.
My white noise machine hums from the outlet near the dresser.
I can’t sleep without it, so I always travel with one.
Ocean sounds tonight. Waves that don’t belong to this part of the world.
They don’t completely drown out the desert—wind whispering against the window, the building settling with small, traitorous pops.
But it’s enough to ease my nerves, to provide a buffer.
Rafe sits on the bed, his back pressed to the headboard, sprawled out in a way that feels deliberate, contained. Like he knows exactly how much of the room is his and isn’t interested in claiming more.
When I come back out, he glances up. Just once. His gaze is steady, calm, unintrusive.
“Bathroom’s yours,” I murmur to them.
Bishop grunts and disappears inside, the door clicking shut a little harder than necessary.
I cross the room and sit on the edge of the bed in my pajamas, careful with my weight. The mattress dips, springs complaining softly beneath me.
“I bet he regrets volunteering to be our third,” I droll with a small sigh, rolling my neck from one side to the other.
Rafe chokes from behind me, and I glance over my shoulder with a raised brow.
He grins. “He fucking wishes.”
My brows sink toward one another before I finally get it. I reach over and snag my pillow, tossing it at him with a grunt. “Please. You know I didn’t mean it like that.”
He catches the pillow against his chest with a laugh. “And if you did?”
“For Bishop?” I shake my head with a low, incredulous laugh.
“Another Calloway then.”
My amusement fades into something else. I bite the inside of my cheek and stare at him for a beat. “And if I did?” I arch a brow in challenge.
He runs his tongue over the edge of his teeth, a low sound from the back of his throat slithering out. He lifts one shoulder and lets it drop slowly.
Both brows rise in surprise. “Just like that?”
He hums, a low vibration I feel more than hear, as he slides down until his head meets the pillow. His arms fold behind his neck, stretching the cotton of his shirt taut across his chest. The seams strain slightly at his shoulders.
“I know how to fight, baby.” The words hang between us, weighted with something I can't quite grasp.
The bathroom door clicks open. Bishop emerges in a cloud of steam, hair damp at the temples, gray sweatpants riding low enough to reveal the cut of muscle disappearing beneath the waistband. My mouth goes dry as he crosses the room, the black fabric of his shirt still settling against his frame.
I drag my gaze away, jaw clenched tight enough to ache.
Bishop drops into the recliner with a grunt, his elbows braced against his knees as he stares at the floor.
For a moment, the only sounds are the waves from the noise machine and the scrape of his palm against his jaw.
He looks so profoundly uncomfortable with the whole situation—like he might rather sleep in the car, or out in the sand with the scorpions, than share a room with me.
Rafe’s eyes flick to me, then to Bishop, then back again. I can feel it even when I’m not looking at him. It's like a current buzzing under the skin.
“Something to say, brother?” Bishop grunts.
Rafe grins, like he actually has a lot of things to say. “Enjoy the recliner, brother.”
I can’t help it—I laugh, the sound brittle as it bounces off the walls. Bishop’s jaw ticks, but he doesn’t rise to the bait. He just extends the footrest with his heel and leans back, arms crossed over his chest.
I let the silence settle. Let Rafe’s easy breathing and the drone of manufactured waves fill the empty space between us. My phone vibrates against the nightstand—Lola’s name lighting up the screen with a single text.
You alive?
I thumb out a quick reply and drop it face-down, feeling the eyes of both men on me even when I refuse to look up.
The sheets whisper against my calves as I slide between them.
My elbow bends at a careful angle, lowering my weight inch by inch until the mattress accepts me.
Two feet of space separate us—my territory, his territory—yet the heat from his body radiates across the divide, warming the air between us like a phantom touch.
My hip shifts a quarter-inch toward the center.
The bed frame betrays me with a groan that seems to echo off the walls.
My muscles lock mid-motion.
Across the mattress, Rafe's breathing stops for two, three, four heartbeats, his silhouette suddenly rigid against the darkness.
I shift my weight, the mattress dipping beneath me as I edge closer. “Is this okay?”
He turns his head slightly, just enough that I can see the edge of his jaw in the dim light. “Are you?”
I nod, even though I’m not sure he can see it. “Yeah.”
His hand finds mine under the covers, fingers lacing through. Not a grab, not a claim, just—there. He doesn’t move closer, but I can feel the warmth of his palm, the pulse at his wrist.
My muscles unclench by degrees. The silence between us grows denser, not awkward but charged, like the thickness of air before a summer storm.
Bishop’s breathing is sharp, regular, like he’s already half asleep.
Except I know better.
I shift, rolling onto my side to face Rafe. He’s already watching me. The blue in his eyes is dark, almost black in the sparse light from the parking lot sign outside.
For a second it’s just our breathing, in and out, in and out, until the rhythm becomes hypnotic. I want to say something funny or clever, but nothing comes. I want to touch his face, but I don’t move.
Instead, I close my eyes and listen to the ocean on the noise machine, pretending it’s real, that we’re somewhere else, somewhere not here.
A hand brushes the hair off my cheek, feather-light. I open my eyes, and he’s closer than before.
“I didn’t hate pretending to be your fiancée today.” The whispered confession falls from my lips without thought. “It was more fun than I usually get to have on recon.”
His teeth flash in the dark, the smile quick and sharp and gone again as he tugs the edge of the sheet higher over our joined hands. “I liked your story about honeymooning in Maui.”
I stifle a laugh against my fist. “It was better than you telling the people next to us at the whiskey tasting about the time you tried to teach me to skateboard and how hopeless I am.”
“Truly terrible,” he whispers, and there’s something soft in his voice that makes my chest ache in a good way.
From the recliner, Bishop's voice cuts through the darkness. “Go to sleep.”
My teeth sink into my lower lip as pressure builds in my chest. I feel like I’m being chastised by a parent.
The mattress shifts beneath me as Rafe exhales—a long, deliberate sound that ends with his shoulders dropping half an inch. Then his eyelid drops in a wink that makes the corner of my mouth twitch.
“Okay, daddy,” I whisper, rolling my eyes as annoyance prickles along my scalp.
Rafe's chest rises, hitches, then falls again. A single tremor that passes through the mattress springs.
Bishop shifts his weight in the recliner. “Jesus Christ, Hale.”
I tilt my face toward the ceiling, letting my grin bloom wide before nestling closer to Rafe's shoulder.
My hair brushes against the cotton of his shirt.
Heat radiates from his skin—six inches of warmth that hovers just beyond my reach.
He doesn't move closer. Doesn't reach for me.
Just exists in the space beside me, steady as gravity.
Minutes stretch like taffy. The clock on the nightstand reads 2:17, then 2:23, then 2:38 without seeming to move at all.
Bishop's breath catches every third inhale, a tiny hitch that betrays his wakefulness.
The white noise machine cycles through its ocean setting—wave, pause, wave, pause—but might as well be silent for all the good it's doing.
Beside me, Rafe's chest rises and falls in a rhythm too perfect to be natural.
I slide my leg an inch to the left. His thigh retreats precisely the same distance. I curl my fingers into the sheet between us; his hand uncurls from the same spot. I exhale slowly through my nose, and he holds his breath until I'm done.
My pinky finger twitches toward the warmth of his hand, then stops. The mattress creaks beneath us, and my heart pounds so hard I wonder if he can feel it vibrating through the springs.
It’s an unconscious choreography, and I’m acutely aware of it. And how much I want to break it. Not because I’m reckless. Or because I need more.
Because there’s something magnetic in his stillness, in the way he takes up space beside me like he belongs there without needing to prove it. A quiet confidence that hums beneath my skin, tugging at me in slow, patient pulses.
Across the room, Bishop shifts again. The recliner gives a tortured groan.
I smile into the fractured darkness.
Bishop's jaw ticks again, a muscle jumping beneath stubbled skin. His eyes aren't on me but on the ceiling, tracking something invisible there. His fingers drum once, twice against the armrest before curling into a fist.
And yet, here we are.
Three bodies. One bed. No one touching.
I count the inches between Rafe's knee and mine: four.
Maybe five. The sheet between us might as well be steel for all I dare disturb it.
My shoulder blade presses into the mattress at an angle that will ache tomorrow, but I don't shift.
The air feels charged, like the moment before lightning strikes.
Rafe's chest rises, falls, rises. One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand. His eyelashes cast thin shadows across his cheeks when he blinks. The heat from him radiates across the gap between us—not touching, never touching, but I feel it all the same.
The desert wind finds a loose corner of the window frame, whistling through with a hollow sound. Sand taps against glass like impatient fingertips.
My eyes stay open in the dark. Across the room, Bishop's do too.
The digital clock blinks 3:17, and no one sleeps.