THIRTY-ONE

THIRTY-ONE

I didn’t sleep for a while.

Not really.

I just lay there, staring at the ceiling, my chest still rising and falling like I hadn’t figured out how to breathe again.

My skin felt hot in places. Raw in others. Like he’d left his fingerprints behind and my body hadn’t caught up to the fact that it was over. My mind hadn’t either. It was still playing scenes like a slow, lazy slideshow—his mouth on mine, the way he said my name, the press of his palm on my hip like he was trying to memorize me.

I turned my head.

Wesley was still asleep. Bare-chested, one arm slung across his side, sheets just barely covering the rest of him.

God.

He looked peaceful. Which felt unfair. Like he wasn’t the one who wrecked me three hours ago.

I bit the inside of my cheek.

The silence was thick. The kind of quiet that makes you want to say something just to fill it. I almost did.

Almost leaned over and asked the dumbest question in the world.
Was that real?

Not just the sex. But all of it.
The kiss.
The way he looked at me like I wasn’t just someone caught in the middle.
Like I was something more than the deal we made.

But I didn’t ask.

I didn’t move.

I just laid there, pretending my heart wasn’t thudding like an idiot and that the warmth crawling under my skin wasn’t from hope.

That was the thing that scared me the most. Not the club, not Marco, not even the damn red file.

It was this—how easy it was to forget all of it when he touched me like that.

I closed my eyes again, just for a second.

Tried to breathe normally.

Tried not to hope for anything at all.

Wesley stirred just as the light started to sneak in through the curtains.

I didn’t move. I just watched him.

His eyes opened slowly, adjusting, then landed on me. For half a second, he didn’t say anything. And for that half second, I thought maybe—maybe something had shifted.

So I smiled. A soft, stupid little smile I didn’t even mean to let out. Just a small curve of my lips that felt like a question.

But he didn’t answer it.

Instead, he sat up, pulled the sheets off his body like it was just another morning, and walked toward the closet.

No kiss. No glance back. No moment of quiet acknowledgment that he’d had his mouth all over me just a few hours ago.

I blinked. “Are we gonna talk about last night?”

He grabbed a shirt from the hanger, slid it over his arms. “Nothing to talk about.”

My stomach dropped a little. “Seriously?”

He turned his back to me as he buttoned up. “It happened. That’s all.”

I sat up straighter, wrapping the sheet around myself. “You kissed me.”

He glanced over his shoulder. “You kissed me back.”

That stung.

I swallowed hard. “So that’s it? We just pretend none of it happened?”

He didn’t answer right away. Just reached for his watch on the dresser, fastened it with the kind of precision people use when they’re avoiding eye contact.

“You always do this,” I said, voice quieter now. “Pull me in, like it means something, and then… you vanish.”

He sighed. “Catrina.”

“Don’t Catrina me,” I snapped. “What was it? Some kind of stress relief?”

He finally looked at me. But the softness from last night was gone. His voice was calm, cool, almost rehearsed.
“We were tired. On edge. It happened. Let it go.”

And just like that, the warmth vanished.

He buttoned the last of his shirt. And I felt like I was the only one standing in the wreckage.

I stared at him, waiting for something—anything—to pull this back from whatever cold edge he’d shoved us toward.

But Wesley was done. Shirt buttoned. Watch set. Expression blank.

The version of him I hated most.

I swallowed around the knot in my throat. My chest felt tight in a way that had nothing to do with what we’d done last night and everything to do with the silence now hanging in the room.

He turned toward the mirror, checking his cuffs like I hadn’t just been naked in his bed hours ago. Like I hadn’t said yes to every goddamn thing he asked for without really understanding why.

I stood. Still wrapped in the sheet. Still raw.

“Are you really doing this?,” I said quietly. “You always make me feel like… like maybe I matter. And then you shut down. Like I imagined it.”

He didn’t look at me.

Didn’t say anything.

I let the silence hang for a beat. Two.

Then I turned and walked toward the door.

I didn’t slam it. Didn’t say one last thing. I just left—barefoot, heart thudding, skin still warm from a night that suddenly felt like it belonged to someone else entirely.

By the time I reached my room, I couldn’t tell if I wanted to scream or cry or laugh at myself for being surprised.

I dropped the sheet, pulled on a robe, and sat at the edge of the bed like someone had carved a hole in the
center of me.

Last night felt like heat.

This morning felt like ice.

And I couldn’t decide which one hurt more.