It feels absurdly intimate, his arm steady around me, his lips brushing my shoulder as he murmurs, “Please relax, okay?”
I nod, finally letting the tension in my body ebb.
“So,” he says after a moment, “how are you feeling about the mural? Now that it’s done.”
I lean back against him, closing my eyes. “Relieved. And scared. And proud, I guess. It feels… like a piece of me is out there now. Not just paint. Like if someone hates it, they’re hating me, too.”
He presses another soft kiss to my shoulder, his voice warm. “They won’t hate it. You gave this town something beautiful.”
His certainty seeps into me, easing the sharp edges of my anxiety. I let myself believe him.
Eventually, I head back to the bathroom to dry my hair fully. Boone trails after me, poking his head into the fridge.
“You weren’t kidding when you said you had nothing in here,” he calls, laughing. “Waffles and…condiments. That’s it?”
“Don’t mock me,” I protest, grinning despite myself.
He pulls out the sad box of frozen waffles, holding it up like evidence. “This is criminal.” Then he digs deeper. “Wait—fish and chips. Okay, this I can work with.”
I lean against the doorframe, towel still around my shoulders, watching as Boone rolls up his sleeves and commandeers my tiny kitchen like it’s the most natural thing in the world. He moves with easy confidence, humming under his breath while he heats oil and arranges everything. My space feels different with him in it—brighter, warmer.
I finish combing out my hair while he plates the food. The smell of fried fish fills the air, cutting through the lingering tang of dye, and for a moment, it feels like something normal. Something simple.
We eat together at the little table, Boone telling some ridiculous story about one of his shifts, me laughing harder than I have in weeks. The heaviness of earlier fades.
And when he looks at me across the table, eyes full of quiet intent, I think maybe I can even let myself want this.
Wanthim.
Heat coils low in my belly, the kind that feels too sharp and too vivid to just be a dream.
I know it’s a dream, though—because no reality could hold this. Gabe’s mouth tracing fire down my neck, Shepard’s hands bracketing my hips, Boone’s chest pressed to my back as his voice rasps low in my ear, “ours.”
The weight of them, the hunger, the claim. My body thrums with it, desperate and reckless, and I can’t tell where one of them ends and another begins. A hand on my breast, another teasing between my thighs, lips everywhere.
It’s overwhelming. Terrifying. God, and it’s good.
I gasp awake, shoving out of the dream like I’ve broken the surface of deep water, lungs desperate for air. My heart pounds as if I’d actually been caught in the tangle of them, slick with sweat. For a split second, I don’t know where I am.
Then I feel the steady rise and fall beside me.
Boone.
He’s asleep, stretched on his side, one arm slung loose across the sheets, his frame filling the small bed like he belongs here.His lips are parted slightly, breath steady. There’s a peace to him like this, a calm I don’t think I’ve ever seen on his face when he’s awake.
I roll onto my side carefully, studying him in the dim morning light filtering through the curtains. The dream lingers like a phantom on my skin, but Boone drags me back into reality.
I let myself look. Really look.
The strong cut of his jaw, shadowed with stubble. The blond hair mussed from sleep, sticking up in a way that makes him look younger, boyish even. The breadth of his chest beneath the thin shirt he pulled on last night, rising and falling with each steady breath. One arm, muscled and tan, draped across the sheet like he owns the whole damn space.
Something aches in me. When was the last time I let myself have this? The simple intimacy of watching someone sleep beside me. The permission to stare and want.
Almost without thinking, I lean forward and brush the lightest kiss along the angle of his jaw. His skin is warm beneath my lips.
His voice rumbles before his eyes even open. “You know staring is creepy, right?”
I freeze, heat rushing to my cheeks.
