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Gone is the pizza box. The beer bottles we lined up like trophies last night. My notes that were scattered everywhere like I’d had a goddamn seizure while studying? All of it gone.

It’s creepy as fuck.

Like she erased last night.

Fuck my paranoia. I’m taking this as a good sign.

Haven wanted a fresh start—and so do I.

She’s in bed, curled on her side facing the wall, one hand tucked under the pillow, the other in a fist near her head. Her hair is a bronze spill across the white pillowcase, and⁠—

Jesus. She’s wearing one of my old football jerseys. I didn’t even realize they’d ended up in the duffel I packed, but thank God they did, because fuck me, the sight makes my cock twitch.

I walk to the bed like a fucking zombie when I should head for the shower to wash off last night’s booze and sweat.

…And the inexplicable stains under my fingernails.

Since I’d made a point of drinking enough to black out last night, there’s a huge chunk of time missing. If anyone in Kruger’s frat had been awake this morning, I’d have interrogated them, but they were all dead to the world.

Fuck it.

I don’t need soap, or memories…I need Haven.

I creep closer, trying not to make the floorboards creak.

Her shoulders rise and fall so peacefully as she sleeps.

She stayed.

I was so sure—sitting in that Uber, head pounding as I pieced together how I got from the bar to Kruger’s frat house with zero memory in between—that I’d walk in to find her gone.

Maybe a ‘fuck you’ scrawled on the bathroom mirror, if I was lucky.

But she’s here.

In our bed.

Looking hot as fuck in my shirt.

I close my eyes and just breathe. The panic that’s been eating at me since I woke up has finally shut the fuck up.

Then I lift the covers and slide in behind her.

She’s so warm. So solid. So fucking real.

I don’t touch her. Just lie close enough to feel her heat and inhale the scent of her lotion and shampoo and let myself believe we’re okay. Whatever I said last night, whatever she’s thinking, we can work it out.

I draw her hair away from her shoulder, pausing when I feel how wet it is.

Guilt surges inside me.

How long did she stay up waiting for me to come back before she realized I was going to stay out all night?

I trail my knuckles down the curve of her shoulder and lean in, intent on pressing my mouth to her skin and waking her up so I can⁠—

Her necklace is gone.

My heart fucking stops.