I sighed, reaching for his jacket.

I removed it slowly, my fingers brushing his shoulders, working the fabric down his arms. He didn't help. He just lay there, eyes half-closed, watching me through his lashes with a drowsy, unreadable expression. I started on his shirt buttons.

After every button I opened, my hands began to shake.

One. The hollow of his throat, glistening with sweat.

Two. The sharp line of his collarbone.

Three. The lean, sculpted muscle of his chest, rising and falling with each breath.

Four.

I stopped. My fingers hovered over the fifth button, trembling so badly I couldn't make them work. His skin was warm beneath my knuckles, feverish from the alcohol, and I could see the faint shadow of bruises — old ones, from fights I hadn't witnessed — mapping his ribs like a history written in violence.

Tempting. So tempting it felt like a sin.

Hazel, what are you even thinking?

I scolded myself, tearing my eyes away, forcing my hands to still. He was drunk. He was vulnerable. He had trusted me to bring him home, not to undress him with my eyes, not to catalog every inch of skin like I had any right to it. I was supposed to be taking care of him, not falling apart at the sight of his bare chest.

I brought warm water and a cloth.

I cleaned his face first — the smudged darkness beneath his eyes, the dried sweat at his temples, the corner of his mouth where whiskey had spilled. Then his neck, my fingers tracing the tendons there, feeling his pulse beat steady and strong beneath my thumb. Then lower, the cloth dragging across his chest, wiping away the grime of the party, the smell of smoke and strangers.

Every time my fingers touched his bare skin, my heart raced faster, my skin burning where we connected. I tried to be clinical, detached, a nurse tending a patient. But my body betrayed me with every trembling breath, every glance at his parted lips, every memory of his teeth against my throat from this morning.

He opened his eyes.

Looked at me. A slow, drowsy smile spread across his face — soft and unguarded in a way he never was when sober, never when the world was watching and he had to be sharp and cruel and untouchable.

He grabbed my hand.

Not rough. Not demanding. Just wrapped his fingers around my wrist and pulled me close, guiding me down until I was half-lying across his chest, my ear pressed to his heart. He wrapped his arms around my waist with a contented sigh, his chin resting on top of my head, his body radiating heat and whiskey and the devastating safety I had spent years trying to escape.

Then he slept.

And I lay there, trapped in the cage of his arms, listening to his breathing slow and deepen, feeling his heartbeat steady beneath my cheek, knowing that I should get up, should move, should reclaim the inch of space between his body and mine before it disappeared completely.

I didn't move.

I closed my eyes and breathed him in, and let the darkness take me too.

I looked at his sleeping face.

The harsh lines of his jaw had softened, the perpetual tension between his eyebrows smoothed away by alcohol and exhaustion. His lashes fluttered against his cheeks — dark, delicate, unfairly long. And his lips, parted slightly, looked softer than I had ever seen them. Vulnerable. Within reach.

He wouldn't know.

He was deep in sleep, lost in dreams I couldn't access, his defenses finally lowered after whatever war he had been fighting at that party. Just one peck. One small, stolen kiss from a man who had taken everything else without asking.

I leaned in.

My lips brushed his — soft, warm, tasting of whiskey and something sweeter beneath it, something that was just him. I lingered longer than I intended, breathing him in, memorizing the texture, the shape, the dangerous intimacy of a mouth that had bitten me hours ago now letting me take without resistance. He moved slightly, a murmur escaping his lips — my name, or something close to it — and I broke away with a gasp, my face burning, my heart hammering so loud I was sure it would wake him.

I didn't pull away.

I hugged him back instead, burying my face in the hollow of his chest, listening to his heartbeat slow and steady beneath my ear, and let his arms cage me in the dark. I slept in his arms — not because I was trapped, but because I was too exhausted to pretend I wanted to be anywhere else.

I woke to bright light streaming through the window.

Not the gentle gray of dawn, but the harsh, golden accusation of mid-morning, painting everything in shades of truth. And then I saw him.

Advik.

He had shifted in the night, burrowed into my neck like a creature seeking warmth, his face peaceful in a way that made my chest ache. His lips were pouting slightly, his brow smooth, his breathing deep and even. His arms were still locked around my waist, heavy and immovable, like he had been holding on even in sleep. Like he was afraid I'd disappear if he loosened his grip for even a second.

I lay still, watching him, my heart full and aching.

Wondering what would happen when he woke up. Whether he would remember. Whether he would pretend he didn't. Whether the boy who had whispered my Hazel in the dark would survive the morning, or whether the man who called me a burden would take his place.

As soon as I shifted, trying to ease the cramp in my hip, his eyes fluttered open.

Confused. Hazy. Squinting against the light like it was an enemy.

"How did I get here?" His voice was rough, stripped of the velvet threat from last night, stripped of everything. Just gravel and confusion and the immediate, defensive blankness of a man who didn't like waking up vulnerable.

"I brought you here." I kept my voice flat, careful not to let the tenderness of the night leak through. "You were drunk. You couldn't stand up."

I paused.

The hurt from last night was still there — fresh, raw, throbbing beneath my ribs. The way he had left without explanation. The way he had shifted away from my touch. The way he had walked into a party and drowned himself in whiskey rather than stay in the same flat as me.

"Why did you drink that much?"

He looked away, toward the window, toward anywhere but my face. "It was nothing."