I woke up cold,which was stupid, because Kazan's house was not a cold house. The walls held heat like they were personally offended by winter, and the blankets were thick enough that I could have gotten lost under them and died there without anyone finding me until spring.
So, of course, I was freezing.
The guest bed felt wrong now. That was the problem. It had been perfectly fine before I knew what Kazan's bed felt like. Before I'd spent a night tucked against him, warm and safe and very much not alone. Before he'd decided the best way to protect me was to sleep outside like some giant, stubborn idiot.
I lay there staring at the little steps beside the bed.
He'd built them for me before I even arrived. Little wooden steps so I could get into the bed without having to climb it like a cliff face. When I'd first seen them, I'd nearly cried.
This morning, they just made my chest hurt.
He'd built steps for a bed he wasn't in.
Great. Fantastic. A very normal thing to be upset about before breakfast.
I rolled onto my back and glared at the ceiling.
He'd slept in the fields again. I knew because I'd looked out the window sometime after midnight, because apparently I was the kind of woman who watched for her husband in the dark like a haunted Victorian widow. I'd seen him out there between the rows, his massive shape barely visible under the trees.
Sleeping outside. On purpose. Because of me.
Or for me.
Those two things were getting very hard to separate, and I hated that.
If I'm near you, I can't keep my hands off you.
He'd said it like it was a fact. Like he was telling me about the weather. Then he'd taken himself out to the orchard because we had to make this look clean. Separate beds. Separate smells. No evidence that the marriage had become anything more than paperwork.
I'd agreed. I'd been the one who said it made sense.
And it did make sense.
I still wanted to throw something.
I shoved the blankets off and climbed down the steps. My feet hit the floor, and I hissed because the boards were cold. Of course, they were. Everything was wrong, so why not the floor too?
The shower was another battle. The controls were made for someone with hands the size of dinner plates, and I spent a full minute turning the wrong knob before hot water finally came out. I stood under it and scrubbed my hair. Hard.
Kazan smelled of smoke and warm wood and the soap he used after working in the fields. It had clung to my hair and skin, and washing it away felt like removing evidence of the only good decision I'd made in years.
I was being a dramatic baby.
Unfortunately, it was also true.
Back on Earth, I'd scrubbed myself raw after dates with James. Not because he'd hurt me physically, not exactly, but because everything about him left a film behind. His voice. His disappointment. The way he could make me feel dirty for wanting anything.
Now I was washing Kazan off because we had to pretend he hadn't made me feel wanted.
That was a special kind of cruel.
When I got back to the room, one of his flannels was still draped over the chair. I stared at it. It was huge and soft and smelled like him.
I didn’t put it on.
I deserved a medal.
I could keep his scent off me for two weeks.
