He laughed. “Callie, I’ve wanted you since the moment I laid eyes on you. I don’t think I’ve been harder in my life.” I could feel the outline of him pressing between my legs, and it only made me want him more.
He slid a hand between us, cupping me. A shaky breath stuttered out of me at the possessiveness of it. “But I just want to take care of you tonight.” His fingers moved slow and hard on my clit, sending waves of pleasure rolling through me. “Want to make you feel good.”
I let him take care of me the way he'd taken care of my whole catastrophic evening. I let him show me what it felt like when someone touched you without keeping score. Without expecting something back. Without the transaction I'd learned to brace for.
I came apart under his hands, and the sound I made was raw and startled and half his name.
He held me through it. Through the aftershocks and the shaking and the tears that came without permission — not sadness, something bigger and older. Relief. The kind you don't expect because you didn't know how much weight you'd been carrying until someone lifted it.
"I forgot," I whispered. Against his chest. Into the dark. "I forgot it could feel like that."
He pulled me closer. Pressed his mouth to my hair. "Then let me keep reminding you."
We lay there in the dark. His fingers traced lazy circles on my back — unhurried, aimless, the touch of a man who had nowhere else to be. The fridge hummed. Down the hall, Maisie's nightlight cast a thin sliver of purple under her door.
"Your chicken was good," I said. Because apparently, after the most emotionally devastating evening of my adult life, my brain's contribution was a culinary review.
"I'll make it again."
"The green beans needed garlic."
"It was onion powder, wasn't it."
"It was onion powder."
He laughed. Low and warm, the kind that vibrates through someone else's body when you're pressed against them. I felt it in my ribs. In parts of me that had been numb for so long, I'd forgotten they could feel anything at all.
I fell asleep against him. First time in two years I fell asleep thinking that maybe I'd already found what I needed to survive tomorrow.
Chapter 11
Clay
Something was touching my nose.
I opened one eye. Maisie Monroe was standing beside the bed in her penguin pajamas, one finger extended, tapping the tip of my nose with the precision of a scientist conducting an experiment.
"Clay," she whispered. Loud whisper. The kind of whisper that could wake a neighboring county. "Clay. Are you awake?"
I was now.
The room came back to me in pieces — the wrong ceiling, the lavender sheets, the warm dip in the mattress beside me where Callie was curled on her side, hair fanned across the pillow, one hand tucked under her chin. She was out. Deep-sleep out. The kind of sleep that comes after you've been held together by adrenaline and fear for twelve hours and someone finally tells your body it's safe to stop.
Maisie tapped my nose again. "Your eyes are open. That means you're awake. That's the rule."
"That is the rule," I whispered back. Actual whisper.
"Mommy's still sleeping. She never sleeps this late. I think you tired her out."
I pressed my lips togetherveryhard. The ceiling suddenly needed intense examination. I was not going to laugh. I was not going to blush. I was a grown man and a world champion, and I was absolutely not going to react to a five-year-old accidentally referencing the fact that I'd spent the previous evening doing things to her mother that —
"Can we make pancakes?" she asked.
"Yep," I said. Much too quickly. "Pancakes. Great. Let's go."
She held up her stuffed horse, who apparently also had an opinion on breakfast. "Horsey wants pancakes, too."
I eased out of bed. Slowly. Carefully. Callie didn't stir — just made a soft sound and pulled the pillow closer and burrowed deeper, and watching her sleep without the lines between her brows, without the jaw set tight, without the constant vigilance that lived in her body like a second skeleton — that was something I wanted to see every morning for the rest of my life.
