Page 135 of Hold Me Until Morning

Not yet.

Not when I didn’t want this night to end.

“Stay with me.” I begged it like a secret.

Cody crawled in, the bed squeaking with his weight, and wrapped me in his arms. Heat blistered, his brutal strength wrapping me whole. I set my head on the steady beat of his heart.

“Hold me until morning,” I whispered there, to that clock frozen at eight-seventeen.

He brushed his lips across my forehead and held me tighter. “Don’t worry, darlin’. I’m not going to let go.”

TWENTY-NINE

CODY

The faintest glimmer of morning pushed at the window, streams of glitter and dust that played through the room nudging me from sleep. I inhaled, filling my nostrils with the scent of strawberries and cream, and I couldn’t help but smile when I realized my nose was burrowed in Hailey’s hair.

I tightened my hold on her where she was already tucked into the well of my arms, the way she’d been the entire night, her head rested on my chest.

Her spirit all around as her breaths remained even and long as she slept.

Peace.

I wondered how I could feel even a flicker of it when I knew I was nothing but a monster for taking her. It wasn’t like my circumstances had miraculously changed, although it felt like everything was different.

A cosmic shift taking place somewhere in my consciousness.

Got the sense my being no longer fully belonged to me.

It’d been fractured.

Fragmented.

Those jagged pieces given to someone else.

I eased back enough that I could gaze at her precious face. Long, full lashes shadowed her cheeks, and her eyes twitched beneath her pale, delicate lids like she was long lost to a dream. Those plush, full lips were softly pursed, like my name still rested there.

Fuck me, she was pretty. Pretty in a way that shifted orbits because her beauty was so big and deep there was no fucking chance it wouldn’t seep all the way out.

Shine like the sun.

A gravity that compelled.

It stole my goddamned breath every time I looked at her.

Punched me in the gut.

Twisted me up in some kind of elaborate origami until I became something else.

Hers.

My chest tightened with the force of it.

This awareness…this need.

This purpose.

Leave it to Karma that it’d be Hailey Wagner who’d confound me this way. Knock me clean from my foundation. Make me turn on every oath I’d ever made.

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