Chapter 20
1161 Words
*Liam's POV*
"Damn."
I walked straight to the bed.
Grabbed my pillow.
Grabbed my duvet.
And walked right back out.
I didn't look at Andrea when I passed her. I didn't need to. I could feel the shock radiating off her like heat.... the sharp, disbelieving silence of a woman who had never once in her life had that particular plan fail. I pulled the door shut behind me with a soft, satisfying click.
And then I smiled.
All the way down the hallway, I smiled.
I didn't even know where I was going. That was the honest truth. I was standing in my own corridor at what, one in the morning? holding a pillow and a duvet like a man who had just been evicted from his own bedroom, with nowhere to be and no real plan.
My feet stopped outside Elena's door.
I stared at it.
Why am I here?
I genuinely could not answer that question. There were eleven other guest rooms in this house. Eleven perfectly good, perfectly empty, perfectly available rooms with beds in them. I knew where all of them were. I had walked past two of them to get here.
And yet. Here I was. Outside Elena's door. At one in the morning. With a pillow.
I knocked before I could talk myself out of it.
There was silence. Then the soft sound of movement. And just before I could turn around the door opened.
Elena stood there in her oversized sleep shirt, her hair was slightly messy, and she looked at me, and then she looked at the pillow, and then she looked at the duvet, and then she looked back at my face.
Neither of us said anything for a full five seconds.
"Hi," I said.
She blinked. "Why do you have your bedding?"
"That is ....a great question."
"Liam. It's one in the morning."
"Can I crash here?"
Her eyes went wide. She was fully awake now. "I'm sorry?"
"Just for tonight. I just..." I shifted the pillow under my arm and searched for a sentence that made sense. Nothing came. "Can I crash here?"
She stared at me with an expression that was equal parts confusion and amusement, her head tilting slowly to one side like she was trying to figure out if I was sleepwalking.
"You have an entire mansion," she said.
"I am aware."
"With multiple rooms."
"Also aware."
"And you're standing outside my door."
"...Yes."
She looked at me for one more long moment. Then, without a word, she stepped back and reached out , grabbed the front of my shirt with one hand and pulled me gently into the room.
I went.
Obviously I went.
She closed the door, turned around, crossed her arms, and looked at me the way a person looks at something they find both ridiculous and deeply entertaining.
"Explain yourself," she said. "It is one in the morning and you are standing in my room with a pillow and a duvet like a lost child. What is happening?"
"Nothing is happening."
"Liam."
"Can we just ... can I sleep here? Nothing will happen, I promise. I just felt like..." I paused. Tried again. "I just wanted to sleep with you."
The silence that followed was immediate and spectacular.
Elena's eyebrows climbed so high they nearly left her face.
"I meant..." I pointed at the bed. "Sleep. In the vicinity of. Near. On the same..." I stopped. Closed my eyes briefly. "I'm going to stop talking."
She pressed her lips together very hard. Her shoulders were shaking.
"You just wanted to sleep with me," she repeated, in a voice that was doing its absolute best not to become a laugh.
"Platonically."
"Uh huh."
"On opposite sides."
"Of course."
"This is not what I—"
"Liam." She held up a hand, turned away, and walked back toward the bed. I could see her laughing silently at the wall, her shoulders giving her away completely. She pulled back the covers on the far side and pointed. "Stay on your lane."
I felt something loosen in my chest. It was warm and easy.
"Yes ma'am," I said.
I don't know why those two words made me so happy. I don't know why climbing into the left side of Elena's bed with my own pillow, at one in the morning, after the absolute circus of a night we'd just had, felt like the most right thing I had done in a long time.
But it did.
We lay there on our backs, staring at the ceiling, the lamp on her nightstand casting everything in soft gold. The house was quiet. The night was quiet.
I turned my head and looked at her.
She was staring at the ceiling, her hands folded on her stomach, her profile soft in the low light.
"Why are you staring at me?" she said, without turning.
"I'm not staring at you."
"Liar."
"I was looking at the lamp."
"The lamp is on my side."
"It's a very interesting lamp."
She turned her head and looked at me flatly. "It's a beige lamp from a furniture catalogue."
"Fascinating lamp. Very complex. I could look at it all night."
She grabbed her pillow.
I had approximately half a second of warning before it came down over my face.
"Hey.." My voice came out muffled. "Elena..."
She pushed it down harder. I could hear her laughing on the other side of it.
"Are you — are you trying to kill me?" I grabbed the edges of the pillow and wrestled it sideways. "With a pillow? In your own bedroom?"
"I am," she said brightly. "Goodnight, Liam."
"This is ... I'm your husband"
"Fake husband."
"Fake husband with rights!"
"You have no rights, you said you were looking at the lamp..."
I finally pulled the pillow off my face and held it above her head in retaliation. She shrieked and grabbed it and I grabbed it back and we were both laughing . Properly laughing, breathless and ridiculous, tangled in duvet and competing pillows at one in the morning like two completely unhinged people.
Eventually we ran out of energy.
The laughing faded into quieter smiling, then into soft breathing, then into the particular stillness that only comes very late at night when the whole world has finally gone to sleep.
I don't know how it happened exactly.
But somewhere in the settling, in the quiet ....our hands found each other. First our fingers touched, then folding, then we held each other's hands. No announcement. No comment. Just her hand in mine like it had always belonged there.
I stared at the ceiling and felt something I hadn't felt before.
Something that scared me a little, if I was honest.
"Goodnight, Liam," she murmured, her voice was already thick with sleep.
I looked at her. Her eyes were closed, her lashes still, her lips curved in the smallest, softest smile.
"Goodnight, Elena," I said quietly.
- Writer
