Cade:
The sheets were cold beside me, the room empty of the life that filled it last night.
For a long moment, I just stared at the empty space where she’d been — her scent still clinging to the pillow, the faintest trace of lavender shampoo and my skin. The sunlight was leaking through the blinds, cutting pale lines across the tangled blankets, and my body still ached from the night before. Every muscle carried the echo of her — the press of her thighs, the sound of her breath when I lost control.
She was gone.
No note. No sound from the shower. No footsteps down the hall.
Just absence — sharp, silent, and as heavy as my guilt.
I sat up, scrubbed my face with both hands, and tried to shake it off. But my body betrayed me — soreness in my shoulders, a bruise on my hip where her knee
