Back to reality
1145 Words
(Reese)
I woke up before he did.
The room was grey with early morning light, the kind that comes in before the sun has fully decided to rise. For a few seconds I lay still and looked at the ceiling and let myself exist in the space between sleep and full awareness where nothing had consequences yet.
Then I felt his arm around me.
His hand was moving in slow circles against my back, not deliberately, just the unconscious movement of someone still half asleep who didn't want to let go of what they were holding. His breathing was even and deep. His body was warm against mine and the room was quiet and for those few seconds before my brain caught up with the rest of me, it felt natural. It felt like something I had a right to.
Then I woke up fully and reality came back all at once.
I went still.
The events of the previous evening arranged themselves in my head in order. Moving in. The hallway. Ethan handing me my bag. Noah's face when I said fiancé. His knock on my door. The way I'd let him in when I should have told him to go wherever he was headed and leave me alone. The way I'd kissed him back when I should have stepped away.
The way I hadn't wanted to step away.
I closed my eyes for a moment. Then I opened them and looked at the ceiling again and made a decision.
I moved his arm carefully and sat up.
He stirred behind me. I heard him take a slightly deeper breath, the breath of someone coming back to consciousness. I didn't turn around. I reached for my underwear on the floor beside the bed and put it on, then stood and found my dress near the door where it had fallen the night before.
"Reese."
His voice was rough with sleep. I pulled the dress over my head and found the zip at the back and pulled it up without answering.
"Hey." I heard him sit up behind me. "Come back to bed."
I turned around then because I needed him to see that I was serious and you couldn't communicate serious to a man like Noah Prescott with your back turned. He was sitting up against the headboard, his hair not quite right, his eyes still carrying the warmth of someone who'd slept well for the first time in a long time. He looked at me the way he'd looked at me last night, like I was something he'd found again and had no intention of losing.
It would've been easier if he'd looked like something else.
"Last night was a mistake," I said.
Something changed in his face. Not dramatically. Just a small shift behind his eyes.
"Don't do that," he said.
"I'm not doing anything," I said. "I'm telling you the truth. It shouldn't have happened and it's not going to happen again."
He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "I asked you to come back to me last night."
"I was asleep."
"Before that."
"I didn't answer you."
"No," he said. "You didn't."
He looked at me steadily. I kept my face where it needed to be and looked back at him the same way.
"What we did last night wasn't an agreement," I said. "It wasn't a reconciliation and it wasn't a promise. It was one night and it's done and I need you to understand that clearly before you walk back across that hallway."
"You have a fiancé," he said. It wasn't a question. He was testing the word, turning it over, trying to figure out how much of it was real.
"Yes," I said. "I do."
"And last night?"
"Was a mistake I won't be repeating." I picked up my shoes from the floor and held them in my hand. "I'd appreciate it if you kept this between us. Ethan doesn't need to know and neither does anyone else."
He looked at me for a long time without speaking. I'd forgotten how he did that, how he could sit in silence and just look at you without it feeling like he was backing down. Most people filled silence because it made them uncomfortable. Noah had always treated it like a tool.
"You still feel something," he said. "Last night wasn't nothing and you know it."
"What I feel isn't the point," I said. "My life isn't the same as it was five years ago. I have things that matter to me and people who depend on me and a relationship I'm not going to throw away because of one bad decision."
"One bad decision," he repeated.
"Yes."
He got up then. He was unhurried about it, the way he was unhurried about most things, like the world adjusted its pace for him and not the other way around. He picked his jeans up from the floor and pulled them on, then found his shirt and put it on without buttoning it. He picked up his jacket last and held it in one hand and looked at me.
"You can call it what you want," he said. "But I know what last night was."
"Noah."
"I'm not going to cause problems with your fiancé," he said. "That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that you and I both know something happened last night that has nothing to do with a mistake." He paused. "When you're ready to stop pretending otherwise, I'm right across the hall."
He walked past me and I heard the front door open and close quietly behind him.
I stood in the middle of the bedroom and looked at the unmade bed and the morning light coming through the window and told myself I'd handled that exactly right. Clean and clear and final. No room for interpretation.
I was Reese Calloway. I'd built a company from nothing, talked my way into rooms that had no interest in letting me in, and come out the other side of things that would've finished other people. I didn't fall apart over a man.
I didn't fall apart over this man. Not again.
I picked up my phone from the bedside table and saw three missed calls from Ethan and a message that said call me when you're up, we need to talk about this fake engagement situation before it gets complicated.
I almost laughed.
Complicated was already here. It had moved in across the hall and it had a leather jacket with a patch on the back that I still didn't know the meaning of, and it had held me through the night like I'd never left.
I called Ethan back and walked to the kitchen to make coffee and told myself that whatever I was feeling right now would pass.
It always passed.
It had to.
- Writer
