For the first time in a long time, I felt wanted. And worse, I felt at home.
Dammit.
I lean against the counter. “Why did he have to smell that good?”
The bathroom mirror is too honest.
I glare at it anyway, clutching my toothbrush. My hair looks chaotic. There’s a red mark on my cheek from the pillow—or Rowan’s bicep, which I accidentally used as a face rest for what was apparently an entire REM cycle.
I splash water on my face and remind myself that this is fine. People wake up entangled with their emotionally unavailable fake boyfriends all the time. This is just a very niche form of trauma bonding.
Nothing to see here.
I slather on moisturizer, hoping it’ll fix the part of me that momentarily liked waking up in his arms.
And then, I hear it.
The door handle jiggles. Once. Twice.
I shriek. “Occupied!”
A pause.
Then, from the other side of the door, his voice—gravel-low and entirely too smug for this early in the morning.
“I need to take a piss.”
I yank down a bathrobe and tie it tight around my body.
“How charming,” I snap. “Right up there with waking up to find your face buried in my shoulder.”
“I was asleep.” His tone is flat.
“You nuzzled, Rowan. Nuzzled. That’s an active verb.”
“I was still asleep.”
“You made a noise.” My voice pitches slightly higher, because now I’m replaying it. The soft, content exhale. The whole cozy, domestic nightmare of it.
He sighs, long and put-upon.
“Do you need the bathroom for another hour, or just until your pride finishes hyperventilating?”
My mouth opens. Shuts.
Because the worst part is, he’s calm. Casual. Like waking up entangled with me wasn’t a crisis. Like it didn’t mean anything.
And maybe it didn’t.
Maybe I’m the only one still panicking about the fact that, for five blissfully unaware minutes, I didn’t hate it.
“Don’t talk to me like I’m being dramatic.”
“Then don’t be dramatic.”
“I woke up in a full cuddle cocoon!”
“And you survived.”
