Chapter 5

I woke up feeling it immediately.

The dull throb behind my eyes. The heaviness in my limbs. The particular kind of morning that arrives after one too many drinks and not enough sleep.

Tuesday. Work day.

I stared at the ceiling and did a silent inventory of my life choices.

The drinks were a bad idea, I knew that the moment I woke up with a throb behind my eyes. Staying out that late was worse. But the part that was really sitting with me, the part I couldn’t shake loose no matter how hard I stared at that ceiling

Was him.

Nate. His hand on my waist. His girlfriend twenty feet away.

Like it had happened to someone else and I’d just been watching.

Except I hadn’t been watching.

I’d been standing there not moving away.

I closed my eyes again.

Yeah.

That was the part I was going to need a minute with.

I got up, showered, and stood in front of my mirror wrapped in a towel, trying to give myself a serious talking to.

The reflection was not cooperating.

Because I looked fine. Normal. Like a person who had simply gone out last night and come home and slept. Not like someone who had spent twenty minutes of a perfectly good evening standing in a crowded club feeling like her entire nervous system had been rewired by one hand on her waist.

I exhaled slowly.

It was nothing, I told myself. He touched your waist. That’s it. People touch people’s waists. It’s a very normal location to be touched. It means absolutely nothing.

I reached for my moisturiser.

He also has a girlfriend, I continued internally. A beautiful, composed, effortlessly elegant girlfriend who looked at you like she already knew exactly what was happening and had the grace not to make a scene about it.

I paused.

That part actually made me feel worse.

Not better.

Worse.

Great, I thought. Fantastic. Really nailing this fresh start.

I made coffee, opened my window, and sat on the edge of my couch with my mug warming both hands.

Tuesday morning quiet, a building still catching up with itself after a late night. No footsteps above me. No voices in the corridor. Just the low hum of the city outside and the sound of my own thoughts being significantly louder than I needed them to be.

My eyes drifted toward the door.

I looked away immediately.

No.

I drank my coffee.

Looked at my phone. Put it down. Picked it up again.

There was a message from Olivia, sent at two in the morning, which meant she’d gone somewhere after dropping me home.

you good? tonight was a lot…

I stared at it.

Tonight was a lot was doing significant heavy lifting as a sentence. I could feel the ellipsis she hadn’t typed. The follow-up question she was deciding whether to ask.

I typed back: I’m fine. Coffee and recovery. Talk later.

I set my phone face down.

I was halfway through my second coffee and a very committed attempt to think about literally anything else when I heard it.

Footsteps in the corridor.

Unhurried. Even.

I knew the rhythm of them already.

Which was insane.

It had been less than a week. I should not know the sound of this man’s walk.

But I did.

And my body apparently knew it too, because my pulse did something immediate and completely unnecessary before I’d even made a conscious decision to react.

I sat very still.

The footsteps slowed outside my door.

Stopped.

I stared at the door.

A knock. Two. Quiet but deliberate.

I set my mug down slowly. Stood up. Smoothed my oversized shirt down over my shorts completely pointless since I looked exactly like someone who had just rolled out of bed, because I had—and crossed the room.

I pulled the door open,

And there he was.

Nate.

Grey t-shirt. Dark sweats. Coffee cup in one hand. Looking like he hadn’t put a single thought into this at all and somehow that made it worse.

His hair was slightly less controlled than usual. His jaw sharper in the morning light.

He looked unreasonably good for this hour.

And I resented it, because it made it very easy to forget why I shouldn’t.