37. Sage
THIRTY-SEVEN
SAGE
Iwake up in my bed and I don’t remember getting here.
The last thing I recall is the couch—Milo’s shoulder under my cheek, elves on the screen, his voice narrating over the dialogue with increasingly unhinged commentary about Galadriel’s hair regimen.
But now I’m in bed with covers tucked around me. Which means someone put me here. Most likely Milo. But when I stretch, joints popping, I spot it.
Eli’s jacket, draped over the back of my chair.
He was here.
I sit up and stare at it, my heart doing something complicated and painful. He’s been a ghost in my life for over a week. But he came here in the dark and tucked me in and left the one thing that means something between us.
Eli.
I press my palms against my eyes and breathe.
Then I’m up and moving before I’ve decided to be. I cross the room and bury my face in the jacket on the chair.
It still smells like me.
Mostly me—days of my shampoo, my skin soaked into the leather. The smell that made me send it back yesterday morning, because it had stopped being his and started being mine, and I didn’t want a piece of him that didn’t have him in it anymore.
But on top of all that’s me, he’s there too.
Faint. Only the top layer. Just enough to know he’s been wearing it since I sent it back, through to whatever brought him here in the dark. He put my olive branch on his body, wore it for a day and brought it back to me.
I don’t know what that means.
Either he’s giving it up—here, keep it, I can’t carry this anymore.
Or he’s giving it back, leaving it for me to find because he doesn’t have the words for what he means: I’m still here.
I press my face deeper into the leather and breathe him in, and I don’t know whether I’m comforted or wrecked.
Maybe both.
I set the jacket back on the chair and head to the bathroom.
When I’m finished, I pad through the hallway barefoot, wearing the oversized T-shirt and sweatpants I put on last night. The apartment is quiet, it’s barely past dawn. But I find Micah on the couch.
He’s asleep. One arm thrown over his head, the other resting on his stomach, a throw blanket tangled around his waist. His shirt has ridden up, exposing a strip of skin above his hip—tanned, lean muscle, the faint trail of dark hair disappearing beneath his waistband.
I should not be staring.
I am absolutely staring.
He’s beautiful in a way that sneaks up on you.
Quieter than the others—softer jaw, longer lashes, the kind of mouth that looks like it was designed specifically to say devastating things gently.
His hair is a mess—dark auburn strands falling across his forehead, sticking up at the back where he slept on it wrong.
There’s a bruise on his forearm, fading yellow at the edges, shaped around a bite mark that’s still healing.
I know exactly where he got it. Know where he got the other healing cut on his arm too.
Is it strange that I get a sick satisfaction knowing I put them there? That I may have marked his body forever?
I quietly make coffee. Two sets of keys are sitting on the counter by the toaster, labeled in Milo’s handwriting. Holden. Eli. Seems Milo’s been handing them out rather efficiently. Or, at least tried to. Eli’s is still here.
Of course it is.
He came here in the dark, tucked me in, left the jacket—and on the way out, refused the very thing that would prove he wanted to come back.
Taking two mugs from the cupboard, I pour the coffee and realize I have no idea how Micah takes it. Black? Milk? Sugar? I know he’s a bartender and probably has strong opinions about beverages, and the thought of getting it wrong makes me irrationally nervous.
I add a splash of milk and half a sugar, hedging my bets.
Then I carry both mugs to the living room and sit on the coffee table across from him, knees almost touching the couch cushion, and just . . . look at him.
This man held me through a nightmare. Touched me like I was something precious and powerful at the same time.
And when Eli walked in and the world tilted sideways, Micah went after him—fought for us—and came back with shaking hands and a kiss that tasted like an apology for something that wasn’t his fault. He’s held me most days since.
His eyes open.
Not the slow, bleary waking of someone surfacing from deep sleep. One second he’s out, the next those blue-gray eyes are on me, clear and warm, like he knew I was there the whole time and was just waiting for me to settle.
“Hey, baby girl.” His voice is morning-rough, low and scratchy. A slow smile spreads across his face. “How’d you sleep?”
“Good.” I hold out his mug. “I made you coffee. I didn’t know how you take it.”
He sits up, the blanket falling to his lap, and takes the mug from me. Our fingers brush. He takes a sip, and I watch his face for the verdict.
He winces—a micro-expression he tries to hide behind the rim of the mug.
“It’s good,” he says.
“It’s terrible, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s—” He takes another sip. Swallows with visible effort. “It’s coffee. It has coffee properties. It’s hot, it’s liquid, caffeinated.”
“How do you actually take it?”
“Black. No sugar. But this is—” He holds up the mug like he’s making a toast. “This is great. You made it for me. That makes it the best coffee I’ve ever had.”
“You’re such a liar.”
“I’m a very sincere liar.” He grins, and his hair is sticking up on one side in a way that makes him look younger. Messy and rumpled and impossibly cute.
He sets the mug on the coffee table, still grimacing like the coffee personally betrayed him.
I set mine beside it and reach to smooth his hair down.
It’s soft under my fingers, thick, and it doesn’t cooperate—springing back up the second I flatten it.
I try again, running my fingers through it this time, and he goes still, like he’s holding his breath, letting me touch him, giving me all the time and space I need to decide what this is.
My fingers trail from his hair to his temple. Down the line of his jaw. The rough scratch of morning stubble against my fingertips. The corner of his mouth, where his smile has gone quiet.
“Sage . . .”
“Yeah?”
“I want to kiss you.”
I immediately close the distance and press my lips to his.
His lips are warm. He tastes like sleep and bitter coffee, like he is just now surfacing into the day and I’m the first thing he sees.
The kiss is slow, a little tentative at first. When I press closer, his hand comes up, cupping the side of my face.
He draws me in, deepening the kiss, and the tremor in his fingers doesn’t match how gentle his mouth feels on mine.
I kiss him back—hungry, greedy, afraid that if I let up for a second, the moment will close up and never come back.
When we finally separate, he rests his forehead against mine. “God, you taste good.”
I kiss him again. I can’t help it. His mouth is soft and rough at the same time, like someone who knows exactly how to take what he wants but is being deliberately, destructively slow about it just to see if I’ll break first.
He pulls back for a second, studying my face.
“You always this much of a morning person?” I ask, breathless.
“Only when I wake up to you.” The cheesy answer would make me roll my eyes if it wasn’t for the fact that he means it.
He leans in again, and this time the kiss is different.
Deeper. His tongue slides against mine and I feel it everywhere—a slow, rolling heat that builds until my whole body is humming.
I climb off the coffee table and into his lap, knees on either side of his hips, and his hands find my waist like they were made to hold me exactly here.
“Fuck,” he breathes, pulling back to look at me. His pupils are blown wide, his lips swollen. “Baby girl, you have no idea what you do to me.”
I shift in his lap and feel exactly what I do to him, hard and insistent against my core. The friction sends a jolt through me that makes me gasp, and his fingers tighten on my hips.
“Micah. I need you to fuck me,” I gasp against his mouth.
“Are you—”
“Micah. Bedroom. Now.”
He stands in one fluid motion, lifting me with him, my legs wrapping around his waist. His hands grip the backs of my thighs, and I can feel the coiled strength of him, how easily he carries me, how steady his steps are even as I’m kissing his neck, his jaw, his mouth.
He sets me down on the edge of the bed and pulls back, standing between my knees, looking down at me with those devastating eyes. His chest is rising and falling fast, and I watch him fight for control.
“Tell me what you want,” he says. “Tell me and it’s yours.”
“You.” I tug his shirt over his head and he lets me, arms rising, and the sight of him bare-chested in my bedroom, morning light catching the lean lines of his body, makes my mouth go dry.
He’s not bulky. He’s built like a swimmer, all long muscle and smooth skin, with a scar across his ribs that I want to ask about later and a tattoo on his left shoulder blade that I’ll trace with my tongue if he’ll let me.
He kneels. Right there, between my legs, hands on my thighs, looking up at me like I’m something holy.
“Can I taste you?” he asks, and his voice is so low it’s barely there. “I’ve been thinking about it all week. Wake up wanting it. Go to work wanting it. I want my mouth on you, baby girl. Please.”
I nod, not trusting my voice, and he hooks his fingers into the waistband of my sweats and drags them, along with my panties, down my legs with a slowness that borders on cruelty.
The cool air hits my skin and I shiver, but his hands are warm, palms sliding up my inner thighs, spreading me open gently.
“Stunning,” he murmurs, almost to himself. Then he leans in and the first press of his mouth against me pulls a sound from my throat that I didn’t know I could make.