Chapter 87: A New Morning

Lisa’s POV

I used to hate mornings.

It’s not that I hated morning — not once you stripped away its various minutiae of this house. The stillness had a weight to it, like I was being smothered, like a hand was resting on my chest as I went through mindless motions.

I would wake up alone, even when someone else was sleeping on the same bed. We were back to back, separated by an invisible barrier, and the silence was aggressive, both of us pretending that the distance was not unusual, was not uncomfortable, was not even required.

Now when I start to come to, the first sensation I feel is warmth.

It wraps around me like a warm blanket and I’m reluctant to open my eyes as if I will shatter an illusion. I can tell exactly where I am by the steady rhythm of rise and fall under my cheek. I have an arm thrown casually across his chest, my leg is interlaced with his, my body is moulded to his like I found my place. There is no hard reality, no sudden jolt of panic, no being reminded of who we were.

Just him.

Just this. Leo’s arm is draped around my waist, his hand resting at the small of my back, a location that seems to have inspired an unusual tenderness in his normally cold exterior while he sleeps. He's breathing slowly and evenly, the quiet pace that draws me back to the present, not away from it.

I don’t move.

I don’t want to interrupt him. I don’t want to disturb this.

For a moment, I let myself just be in the sensation of being held, wanted, safe. My mind isn’t racing to my to-do list, or the emails I need to answer. The powdered face of obligation isn’t pressing immediately behind my eyes. Instead, I feel peace — soft, unexpected peace — trickling into the crannies of my soul.

This is new.

And somewhere along the way, I figured that's how it's supposed to be.

Gradually his hold tightens slightly, as if he were even in his sleep aware that I am starting to wake. Hisflace moves closer to my hair and his nose lightly brushes against my temple. It’s instinctive. Unconscious. But it just makes me breathless.

“Morning,” he murmurs, his voice still hoarse with sleep.

“You’re still half asleep,” I whisper.

“Don’t matter,” he says, his hand idly making little circular motions across my back. “You’re still here.”

There is something profound in the simplicity of that statement. You’re still here. No expectation, no pressure. Just relief.

“Yes,” I say softly. “I’m still here.”

He slowly opens his eyes, and when he looks at me there is no wall there anymore. No formality. No scripted apathy. Just warmth, just genuine warmth, just a quiet affection that makes my heart hurt in the best way I could ever imagine.

“Did you get any sleep?” he asks.

"Better than I've slept in a long time."

His lips curl slightly. “Me too.”

We don’t move for a while after that. Morning sunlight begins to seep in through the curtains, dusting the sheets, our tangled bodies, the new life we seem to be creating lying in wait, outside can hold, for now there is only this soft, sacred moment.

Eventually, I shift slightly, stretching my cramped arm, and laugh when he groans in protest.

“You’re going to have to let me go at some point,” I say teasingly.

“I hate that point,” he answers, pressing down his hold for an added second in what seems like an eternity before lifting me up.

Regretting it, I sit up and wrap the blanket around me as he runs his hand through his untamed hair, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “Coffee?” I suggest.

“Yes,” he says immediately. “And maybe… you?”

I arch a brow playfully. “With the cup or without the cup?”

“Next to it,” he says, his expression softening again. “That’s my favorite version.”

In the kitchen, cool air brushes my skin while my feet, uncovered, roam the floor. I grind the beans while Leo watches me from the other side of the counter, and his gaze is the kind of too-close-for-comfort intimacies that perhaps ought to be reserved for loves mornings instead of This is the way I get ready every morning rituals. I know he’s looking at me—warm, admiring eyes, and instead of shrinking from the attention, I start to lean into it.

“Stop looking at me like that,” I whisper.

“Like what?” he asks.

“Like I’m something you’ve been waiting for your whole life.”

He changes the expression on his face. Honest. Vulnerable. “Maybe I have been.”

For a brief moment, the slow drip of coffee filling the pot is the only noise between us. I feel my heart beating too loud. I look into his eyes, and there is a certain unspoken energy in the air between us that we no longer feel compelled to run away from.

I pour two cups of tea and offer one to him. Our fingers graze as I do and the electricity between us is soft now, mellow, no longer shocking, but deeply soothing.

We bring our mugs into the living room and sit on the couch, knees touching, shoulders pressed together.

Inside, we are leisurely in our movements.

“So,” he says after a while, “what’s a perfect morning for you?”

I think for a second. For years the answer would have been – alone, in control, on guard. But now?

“This,” I say. “It is no pressure, no pretending, just bonding, just…being with you.” “It is now time for you to just be…with me.”

His thumb grazes my knuckles. “I want to make sure you get more mornings like this, then.”

There is no swelling rhetoric in his phrases, no assurance of a princess story. Only quiet dedication.

We don’t speak for long, about nothing and everything in whispers. About childhood memories. About places we want to go. We talked some ridiculous stupid dreams that we never told nobody else. Each sentence is like a thread that draws us together, tending to the rips we had made.

I look at him – really look at him – and I know that the man sitting next to me is not the stranger I married out of necessity.

He feels like my choice.

My partner.

My safe place. And I lay my head on his shoulder again, filling my lungs with the familiar smell that now feels like home, and I know in a quiet certainty that our mornings shall never again be far apart.

They will be ours.

And this new start will be traced in each sunrise that we own.