Page 64 of Depths of Desire
Lennox immediately curled against me, still trembling slightly from the aftershocks. I pulled him close, pressing kisses to his temple as we both came down from the high.
“That was…” he started, then trailed off.
“Yeah,” I agreed, understanding perfectly.
We didn’t speak after that. We didn’t have to.
Everything that mattered had already been said with touch and sweat and the quiet that followed.
And when sleep finally took us both, I felt more at peace than I had in months.
But peace, I would learn, was fragile.
Sleep took me for a while.
It dragged me under gently, and I didn’t remember the moment I gave in, only that the world faded with the warmth of him wrapped around me.
But then, something shifted.
My eyelids fluttered open to darkness and stillness, and the first sensation was panic.
A weight on my chest. Thick. Crushing. Cold.
For one dizzying moment, I thought I was drowning.
Water filled my nose, my throat, the sound of my heartbeat echoing like I was submerged. It was instinctive, primal, my hands twitched toward the surface that wasn’t there, the surface that I couldn’t reach…
And then I gasped.
Air rushed back in.
Sheets tangled around my waist. Sweat cooling across my back. The rhythmic thrum of Chicago night filtering through the cracked window.
I was awake.
Not drowning. Not underwater.
Just…suffocating from something else entirely.
I turned my head.
Lennox lay beside me, sound asleep. One hand under the pillow, lashes resting against his cheeks, chest rising and falling with the slow, unconscious rhythm of safety and peace.
And I was anything but.
He looked so heartbreakingly serene in sleep. Like nothing could touch him. Like he trusted this bed and this moment enough to let go.
I stared at him in the dim light, my heart cracked wide open.
Because he had no idea what was happening inside me. No idea that my mind was dragging me back to the words my coach had said hours earlier, echoing like thunder in a sealed room.
The dates moved. Second week of June. Nationals. You’re in.
The words hadn’t registered at first. They hadn’t needed to. Nationals was always moving. But always in July or August.
Except not this time.
Not this year.
