Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 75833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
I pulled the sheet higher, not for modesty, just because the room’s air had cooled and I suddenly felt the lift of the morning. He looked over once, checking on me and his mouth did that almost smile again. He crossed the room, put a palm on the side of my neck, and leaned down so his forehead touched mine.
“Text me when you’re off,” he ordered but paused with a smirk. “Well, if you want more of this.”
I nodded embarrassed about the way I absolutely wanted more of this.
He kissed me once, quick and sure, then straightened to move out of the space. At the door he looked back, the way people do when they’ve learned to take mental pictures. I took one too. Then he was gone, and the hallway swallowed him with the soft hiss of the hydraulic hinge.
I lay there, still, counting the places on my body that felt…different. Not in the way people warn you about. Not in the way I’d braced for. In the way that says somebody got in there, soul deep. Maybe it was because I was a virgin and I was somehow romantizing what we had. Who knew if any of this was real because my life was upended before landing here.
I got up eventually, pulled on my softest T-shirt, and made coffee with the cheap machine on the dresser because I didn’t want to go downstairs and run into anybody’s eyes with my hair like this and my face like this. I sipped it by the window and watched a bird circle above the parking lot like it was waiting on the scraps to devour for a morning snack.
I texted Lyric a single line: I rode again. She sent back three exclamation points, a coffee cup, and the word YAY in all caps, then followed with a heart and the words You deserve soft. I set the phone down and put my palm over my own heart, like I could feel the truth of that through skin and bone. Once the caffeine from the coffee awakened me, I got in the shower rinsing away the previous night. While being clean was refreshing, there was something about washing him off of me that stung just a little bit too.
When I went to the mirror to braid my hair for work, my fingers were steadier. I looked like myself. Not a different person, not some transformed version with glowing skin and glittering eyes. Just me, with sleep lines on my cheek and a softness under them I was learning to trust.
Before I left the room, I glanced at the bed. The sheet was a little wrinkled, only because sheets wrinkle when people are alive on top of them. While he had made sure to shift us away from the wet spot, I knew they needed to be washed. Quickly, I stripped the bed although a little sad to take his scent away since I somehow felt like he might not ever spend the night with me again. Then I opened the door, stepped into the hallway noise, and let the day give me whatever came next.
14
MELODY
One Month Later
A month sounded like a long time until you live it. I once heard a saying about the days are long but the years go by fast. Life never felt that way back in Montana. But here, it definitely did.
The first days felt like I was learning a new language with all the verbs missing.
What are we doing?
What am I to him?
What is he to me?
Then the days started linking arms. Work, ride, sleep with him in my bed or in his occasionally, but mostly sleeping alone. The rhythm didn’t make everything simple, but it made it steadier. The sharpest edges in me weren’t knives anymore. More like the corners of a table you learn to walk around without bruising.
Enzo was a big part of that. He was still himself—blunt as a hammer, quiet when he didn’t have something worth saying, a man who drew his lines like he trusted his own hand. Gentle but firm. I kept testing those words in my mouth.
Gentle, because he never made me guess about whether I could say no. Firm, because when he meant yes he said it like a promise and kept it. I learned the pressure of his palm on the back of my neck with a mild squeeze when he wanted my anxiety to drop two notches. I learned the way he took a curve on the old county road so smooth it felt like the road leaned for us.
He didn’t want the world to make a fuss over us. He never called me his old lady. He never did a big speech. But his hand found mine under tables, and his mouth found the quiet part of my hairline when I was still half-asleep, and he’d mutter “text me” like the least romantic instruction and then answer in two minutes flat when I did. If I asked for slow, he gave me slow. If I asked for quiet, he rode me out where there wasn’t any traffic and let the air do its work.