Page 47 of Please Open Me
After a long moment, her gaze drifted. She smacked her lips, gave a soft sigh, and went back under.
I pressed a hand to my chest and exhaled.
Tension melted just enough for me to flick on the butterfly lamp. I grabbed a book from the shelf and crawled back into bed.
When I was pregnant with Rosie, I learned that if I lay still enough and focused on something else, I could sometimes trick my body into ignoring the nausea.
But this wasn’t morning sickness.
This was hunger.
Raw. Aching. Impossible to ignore.
Worse than anything from my third trimester.
I could eat a full meal and still be starving an hour later. And it wasn’t like I was craving kale or steamed rice. I wanted fries. Mac and cheese. Burgers. Trash food I hadn’t touched in almost a decade.
With a photoshoot next week, that didn’t work.
Luckily, my dad once told me that water filled an empty stomach as well as food. And, right now, Ineededthat.
My fingers brushed the cool metal of my water bottle. I flipped the top and took three long, desperate pulls through the straw.
That’s when the water stopped.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
I didn’t want to go upstairs. If I did, I’d grab a snack. IknewI would. And that was exactly what I was trying to avoid. I shook the bottle, hoping for a slosh.
Just ice.
“Goddammit,” I hissed, slamming it onto the nightstand harder than I meant to.
My lip wobbled.
Of course it did.
I didn’t even have a good reason to cry, not one I could explain, anyway. But I wanted to.
I was tired. My stomach was empty. My brain was full. Everything felt...off.
Like I was one minor inconvenience away from falling apart.
Then—
“Mae?”
Cameron’s voice was thick with sleep. That low, scratchy drawl he only had when he was half-conscious.
Shit.
My shoulders slumped, like I could disappear under the blankets. The covers rustled, and a moment later, his hand found my back.
“You alright?”
I nodded, but didn’t look at him. Just curled up tighter.
“You sure?”
