Time stopped existing in that motel room.
We didn’t leave. Not for food, not for air, not for anything that reminded us the world outside was still turning without us.
Day blurred into night, night blurred into day. The curtains stayed drawn, the sheets stayed tangled, and our bodies stayed pressed together in every possible way.
It wasn’t just lust anymore—it was survival.
Every kiss, every touch, every desperate joining was a way to push back the grief, to fill the silence that otherwise would’ve swallowed us whole.
We didn’t talk about Mom. Or Lily. Or what we’d lost. The outside world was poison, and the motel room was our antidote.
⸻
The second day, I woke up to Mark watching me.
He was sitting against the headboard, bare-chested, his hair tousled, his eyes shadowed with exhau
