It’s too short. Too narrow. Too lumpy. And I am too aware that there’s a warm, soft, impossible woman asleep ten feet above my head.
I turn onto my back. The cushion digs into my ribs. I turn onto my side. The blanket pulls tight. I turn again. The stove pops and settles, and every time it does I snap awake like a guard dog.
There’s no reason for this. I’ve slept on worse. Cot in Kandahar. Floor of a transport. Front seat of the truck more times than I care to admit. Sleep is an old soldier I know well.
Tonight it’s a ghost I can’t catch.
I scrub a hand down my face. The ceiling stares back. I tell myself to stay put. I tell myself it’s fine to be uncomfortable. I tell myself it’s one night.
The mattress up in the loft has my shape in it. The pillow smells like home.
I can’t take it anymore.
I get up quietly and climb the ladder to the loft. The glow from the stove below paints the ceiling orange, enough to see her curled in the quilt. One hand under her cheek. Hair fanned out. Lips parted just slightly.
And I’m hit—hard—with something I haven’t felt in years.
Not want. Not exactly.
Belonging.
Her in my bed looks right in a way nothing has in a long time. Like she fits into the negative space of my life I never realized was empty.
I shouldn’t get in that bed.
I should turn around and go down and let the couch chew me alive.
But she’s small under the quilt, and the wind whistles against the cabin, and the idea of going back to the couch feels like putting myself outside on purpose.
Just sleep, I tell myself. Nothing else. I’ll stay on top of the covers. I’ll face away. I won’t touch her.
I ease onto the mattress, careful, slow. The quilt doesn’t even rustle. I stay rigid on my back, staring at the beams.
I can do this.
Then she moves.
Her arm slides across my chest, palm settling right over my heart like she put it there on purpose. I stop breathing. I don’tdare move. Her fingers curl into my shirt, holding, like she’s anchoring herself.
My heart goes wild.
This isn’t allowed. She’s asleep. I know that. I’m not thinking about kissing her or touching her or anything else. I’m thinking about not moving a muscle because one shift might break this moment that feels like it’s holding me together by threads.
She nuzzles closer, still dreaming, her forehead brushing my shoulder. A soft hum leaves her throat—the sound someone makes when they’re safe.
Safe.
With me.
And that does something to me I don’t have language for.
I lay there frozen, while her hand drifts across my chest. It’s slow and innocent. Not exploring. Not searching. Just… resting. Like she’s known me a long time.
Then—god help me—she brushes her lips against my jaw.
Not a kiss. Not deliberate. The kind of sleep-soft movement people make when they’re shifting in a dream. But it is enough to pull a sound in my chest that I haven’t heard from myself since I was young and alive in ways I barely remember.
I don’t move toward her. I don’t take anything she’s not offering consciously. I just lie there and let the moment ruin me from the inside out.
