Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 75547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
For a second I don’t move. Sunrise is just an orange shade through the blinds, the kind of light that lets the room pretend it’s not quite time to get up yet. Kristen’s tucked along my side, one knee over my thigh, an arm flung across my stomach like she fell asleep mid-claim. My shoulder aches in that good, used way where you remember a thing by the echo it left. Her hair smells like clean soap and something that’s just her; the heat where she’s draped across me makes the rest of the bed feel cold.
I blink up at the ceiling and try to find the restless noise that usually sits under my skin. It’s not here. Last night burned it out of me or drowned it under hot water and the sound of my name pulled out of her like truth. Either way, I don’t miss it.
She stirs. Little sound in her throat, soft as a yawn that changed its mind. Her fingers flex against my stomach, then smooth, like she’s making sure I didn’t sneak off while she was sleeping.
“I’m here,” I whisper, voice wrecked with morning.
“I know,” she answers into my chest, words warm on skin. Then she tips her head back and looks at me properly. Her eyes are heavy, content, not a whisper of doubt in them. “Hi.”
“Hey.” I drag my knuckles along her jaw, slow. “Sleep okay?”
“Out like a light,” she mutters, smile curving, lazy and certain. “You?”
“Yeah.” It’s not a word I waste if it isn’t true.
We lie there a while and let the room learn us again in this new shape. I take inventory the way I do when I rebuild engine—listen, feel, wait for a rattle that would mean something’s off. There isn’t one. If anything, the idle is smoother.
“Any regrets?” I ask, because I’m a man who likes to cut out the guesswork before it grows teeth.
Her mouth does that surprised thing where the corner lifts like she got caught liking something. “No.” Then, stronger: “No.” She searches my face. “You?”
“Not a one.” The force of it surprises me. I soften it with a thumb to her cheekbone. “I meant what I said in the shower. You had the choice. You stayed.”
“And I’ll keep staying.” She says it easy, like coffee orders, like addresses you don’t have to look up anymore. She shifts, sprawls more of herself across me, not shy about taking space. “I missed you,” she adds, a small confession with a big shadow.
I swallow around a thing that’s too large to chew. “Three days felt longer than they should’ve.”
Her smile flickers into something like triumph—no gloating, just recognition. She taps my sternum once, playful. “You’ll tell me next time?”
“Yeah,” I commit to her. No flinch. No dodge. “I’ll tell you as long as I can. This popped up and was an urgent ride out. Club shit.”
We let the morning creep a little higher up the wall. When she reaches for the sheet to pull it up, the hem slides and a flash of red peeks along my shoulder where her nails said yes last night. Her eyes catch on it; her mouth goes soft and then proud.
“Sorry,” she murmurs, not sorry at all.
I laugh. “Leave it. I left my own.” I admit looking to the bruised bite on her shoulder.
She smiles proudly, “I asked you to mark me.”
Then, because I want the words in the room where they belong, I say, “You’re mine, Kristen.”
Her gaze cuts back to mine. No flinch. “And you’re mine.”
I nod once, more vow than agreement. “We’re clear. I don’t share and I don’t expect you to either.”
She kisses my chest like a signature on a line. We lie there long enough for the AC to cycle again and a lawn mower to growl alive on the next block. The regular world is starting up its shift. We should join it.
“Breakfast?” I ask. “Or you want to stay horizontal and pretend we don’t need food.”
She pretends to think. “Food, but then we should come back to bed and see how this horizontal version compares to vertical.” She winks and I fall more in love with her fire.
I snort, roll out of bed, catch the sheet when she tries to steal it with her. “In a minute,” I say, and throw her my T-shirt from last night. She pulls it on and claims my boxers again and I find myself happy about it.
In the kitchen I make coffee while she sits on the counter because she likes the height and because her feet always find the rung my boot scuffed up. She watches me, quiet, not the way people watch when they’re waiting for a show, but the way people watch when the watching is the point.
“You’re staring,” I tell her over the pour.