He stood at the foot of the bed and looked at her.
She was on her side, back to the door, her hair loose against the pillow. The thin strap of her nightgown had slipped from one shoulder, exposing a curve of skin in the low light that was soft and unguarded and entirely unintentional, and the sight of it moved through him like something he had no framework for.
The whiskey was still warm in his blood. Not spinning. Not blurring. Just present, a looseness in his shoulders and a brutal honesty in his chest that sobriety would have let him bury. He was aware of everything. The rise and fall of her breathing. The moonlight tracing the line of her shoulder. The fact that she was real and warm and three feet away and he had spent the entire evening in a bar trying to drink away the memory of h
