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We both would’ve known that if she were awake.
I lean down until my forehead rests gently against hers, closing the distance between us until there’s nothing left but her warmth and the quiet rhythm of her breathing.
I close my eyes and breathe her in, letting her scent fill my lungs.
When I finally open my eyes, those honey eyes I’m crazy about are gazing back at me.
She’s awake.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
“Why did you sit outside my door?”
She blinks, her lips parting to answer, only to fall closed again. For a second, she seems to struggle with the words, searching for a way to explain herself.
“I thought...”
“What?”
“I thought…maybe if someone was outside the door, the nightmares wouldn’t be able to keep you for long.”
Everything inside me stops and all I can do is stare at her.
I look past those hard edges, past the walls she’s spent a lifetime building, and see the heiress beneath them who has perfected the art of emotional distance so thoroughly that the world mistakes her guarded heart for indifference.
This stunning creature sat outside my bedroom. Not because she wanted something, simply because she’d thought I would need someone after the nightmares haunted me.
Fuck.
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know.”
“Then why?”
“I don’t know.”
But I know.
She knows, too.
She’s just not ready to say it out loud.
We fall quiet again, sharing the silence between us.
I lean down and press a soft kiss to the top of her head before straightening and glancing toward the door. “I should let you sleep.”
“Stay...”
There she goes asking me to stay again
The word is barely more than a whisper but it hits me like a fucking bullet.
Because no one has ever asked me to stay before. Not until her.
