Chapter 7

The first thing I registered was the heavy, solid weight of his arm draped over my waist, a possessive anchor keeping me tethered to the mattress. The air in the hotel room was cool, the kind of crisp morning chill that usually wakes you up, but I felt boneless, melted, and entirely content. Sunlight, thin and pale, filtered through the heavy velvet drapes we’d half-zipped, casting long, dusty beams across the rumpled duvet. I blinked, my eyelids sticking together for a moment before I focused on the ceiling, trying to piece together the night’s chaos. We hadn’t gone to my apartment. We hadn’t gone to his. We had just… stayed. The private karaoke room had been too intimate, the lights too dim, the music too loud to really hear each other breathe, so we had stumbled out into the cool night air, the city streets blurring past as we walked in a daze, hands interlaced, not wanting to break the spell. He had carried me up the stairs to the hotel’s executive suite, his breathing steady despite the exertion, murmuring soft, nonsensical praise against my neck the entire way up. Now, he was still asleep, his chest rising and falling