I lie still, my body heavy and warm, my head rising and falling with the slow, unhurried rhythm of his breathing. The anger that had once burned so brightly in my chest is gone now—not extinguished, but quieted, buried beneath something softer that I don't want to name.
His heartbeat thumps beneath my ear, steady and deep, a sound that seems to belong to the silence of the room itself.
Thump...
Thump...
I should move. I should push him away, tell him to leave, draw a line between us.
But the weight of exhaustion presses down on me like a blanket woven from the night itself, and his arms feel too comfortable, too familiar, too much like home.
His hand rests on my waist, holding me gently. The other moves in slow, lazy circles against the back of my head, his fingers threading through my hair with endless patience.
