9. Morgan
MORGAN
Iwake up in a bed that isn’t mine, in a room I’ve never slept in, and for three full seconds I don’t know where I am.
Then I feel him.
His arm is heavy across my waist. His chest is warm against my back and his breath is slow and steady against my hair, and everything about last night comes rushing in so fast that my whole body flushes.
The kitchen. The counter. His hands. His mouth. The way he said my name like it was the only word he’d ever needed to know.
I lie still and let myself have this. Just for a minute. Just the feeling of being held by someone who asked me to stay and meant it. Someone who carried me to his bed because he wanted me there, not because I earned it by being useful or agreeable or easy to be around.
The morning light is coming through the window in pale gray strips. The bedroom is as spare as the rest of the cabin. A bed, a dresser, a lamp. No curtains, just the trees outside filtering the light into something soft and private.
His boots are on the floor by the door, lined up neatly, and mine are somewhere in the kitchen, along with most of my clothes. The thought of that makes me press my face into the pillow to keep from smiling too hard.
His arm tightens around me—instinct, pulling me closer in his sleep like his body knows I’m here even when his mind doesn’t. My throat goes tight.
When was the last time someone reached for me?
I grew up reaching for other people. My mom first, then everyone else.
Teachers who needed a helper, friends who needed a listener, coworkers who needed a shift covered.
I learned early that the fastest way to matter to someone is to be the person they can count on, and I got so good at it that I forgot there was supposed to be a version of this that went both ways.
Elias’s hand is splayed across my stomach.
Large, warm, still. I cover it with mine and trace my fingers across his knuckles and think about how these hands pulled me off a mountain, held ice to my ankle, cradled my face in a kitchen that smells like cocoa powder.
Something shifts inside me that I don’t have a word for yet.
I chose this.
The thought is so clear and so simple that it almost doesn’t seem like it should matter.
People choose things every day. But I don’t.
I say yes to what other people choose for me, and I call it generosity, and I tell myself it’s enough.
But last night, I stood in this man’s kitchen, and I wanted something for the first time in so long that I’d almost forgotten what wanting felt like.
I wanted him. Not because he needed me, not because I was filling a gap or solving a problem or being the version of Morgan who shows up and smiles and says it’s no problem.
I wanted him because his hands are steady and his voice is low.
I wanted him because he looked at me on a rock above the valley and told me the worst thing he’s ever done and then let me take it in without asking me to make it better.
He didn’t need me to make it better. He just needed me to stay.
And I did.
His breathing changes. The slow rhythm shifts, catches, and I feel his body tense for a half-second before it relaxes. He’s awake. I know because his thumb moves against my stomach—a small, deliberate stroke—and then his face presses into my hair and he breathes in like he’s making sure I’m real.
“Morning,” I say.
He makes a sound. Low, rough, not quite a word. His arm pulls me tighter, and I feel his mouth curve against the back of my neck.
“You stayed,” he says.
“You asked me to.”
“Didn’t think you would.”
I turn in his arms. It takes some maneuvering, and my ankle protests when I shift my weight, but then I’m facing him and his eyes are open and sleepy and looking at me with an expression that makes my heart race.
“I wanted to,” I say.
He looks at me for a long time. His hair is a mess, and there’s a pillow crease on his cheek.
He’s so far from the stone-faced man who walks into Sugar Moon every morning and says nothing that I almost can’t reconcile the two.
This version of Elias is soft and warm and open, and the fact that I’m the one who gets to see it makes me feel like I’ve been handed something precious and breakable.
“How’s the ankle?” he asks.
I laugh. I can’t help it. We’re lying in his bed after the most intense night of my life, and he’s asking about my ankle. It’s so perfectly Elias that I press my forehead against his chest and laugh until my shoulders shake.
“It’s fine,” I say into his chest. The feel of his bare skin against my face makes the laughter dissolve into something warmer and quieter.
“You always say that,” he murmurs.
His hand comes up and pushes my hair back from my face, tucking it behind my ear the way I do to myself a hundred times a day at the bakery. But when he does it, it feels like something sacred.
“Maybe this time I mean it,” I say.
He tips my chin up. Looks at me. His eyes are dark and serious and searching, and I know he’s looking for the truth behind the words because that’s what Elias does. He listens for the thing you’re not saying. He watches for the thing you’re trying to hide.
I let him look. I don’t hide anything. For the first time in my life, I don’t arrange my face into something easy and pleasant and manageable. I just let him see me. Scared and happy and overwhelmed and certain—all of it, all at once.
“I mean it,” I say. “I’m fine. I’m better than fine.”
He kisses me. Slow, soft, morning-gentle.
Not like last night when everything was urgent and desperate and starving.
This is something else. This is a man kissing a woman he asked to stay who actually stayed, and I can feel the disbelief in it, the gratitude, the careful wonder of someone who didn’t think he was allowed to have this.
We lie there for a while. The light gets stronger and the cabin warms up and his hand traces slow patterns on my back. I listen to his heartbeat and think about all the mornings I’ve spent pouring coffee and plating scones and saying yes to everyone who asks me for something.
Today I’m not at the bakery. I almost didn’t send the text.
I lay there in the dark with my phone in my hand and my thumb hovering over the screen, listening to Elias breathe, and every instinct I have told me to put the phone down and set my alarm for five a.m. the way I always do.
Alicia would have to open alone. Someone might need something and I wouldn’t be there.
The bakery would survive without me for one morning, but my brain doesn’t process that easily.
It took me three drafts to write five words.
Can you cover tomorrow morning?
I sent it before I could talk myself out of it, and then set the phone down and waited for the guilt to hit. It didn’t. That might be the most remarkable thing that’s happened in the last twenty-four hours, and a lot of remarkable things have happened in the last twenty-four hours.
“I should make you breakfast,” I say, because the instinct is still there. The pull to give, to do, to be useful.
“No,” he says. “You should stay right here.”
I look up at him. He’s not smiling, but his eyes are warm in a way I’ve never seen them. Warm and steady and sure.
“Okay,” I say.
I stay.