Page 39 of Beautiful When He Breaks

“Sounds threatening,” Eli mutters, but there’s affection tucked under it. He hesitates one more second, then closes the door behind him and comes over to the bed.

He doesn’t ask permission; he doesn’t need to. He just pulls back the covers on the empty side and slides in beside me with a tired sigh, settling onto his back like he’s done a hundred times before. It still feels bizarrely natural the second his shoulder brushes mine under the blankets.

My whole body goes very still. After the night I’ve had, after the apartment and the shower and the dark, the sudden warm reality of Eli in my bed feels so good it almost hurts. It’s the purest thing that’s happened to me in hours.

He turns his head slightly toward me. “You mind?”

“No,” I say immediately, and then softer because immediate might sound too eager, even though he’s too tired to read into it. “No, I don’t mind. But you know there’s a whole room down the hall with your name on it, right?”

“I know,” he says. “I didn’t want that room.”

He says it so plainly, an honesty in Eli that makes every simple statement land deeper than it should. I stare up at the ceiling because looking directly at him right now feels unsafe.

After a second, I ask, “How was your first day without Mila?”

He groans softly and throws an arm over his eyes. “Awful.”

I smile despite myself. “That bad?”

“That bad. I kept checking my phone like a psycho. Coach definitely got told something because he didn’t rip my head off when I missed cues. You and Luca need to stop conspiring behind my back.”

I grin at that. “We’ll take it under advisement.”

He moves his arm enough to glance at me. “So that’s a yes.”

“That’s a maybe.”

“That’s a yes,” he says again, too tired to sound properly accusatory.

I shrug one shoulder. “You looked like you were about two stress levels away from trying to call home from the huddle.”

He drops his arm back over his eyes and laughs softly. “Yeah. Fair.”

That sound of him being sleepy and unguarded in my bed feels unbearably good.

He keeps talking, voice getting lower and rougher as fatigue drags at it. He tells me about training, about how weird it felt leaving Mila with Mrs. Alvarez, even though he knows she’s good, about how Roman apparently tried to explain baby burping techniques to her as if she hadn’t raised four children and six grandchildren already. He tells me Mila took her bottle fine. Mrs. Alvarez called her “an observant little bean,” which has stuck in his head all evening for some reason. That Killian actually took over, no complaints, just a bottle in one hand and his phone in the other while terrifying somebody over email. That he felt guilty for enjoying a hot shower that lasted longer than four minutes.

As he talks, something in me unwinds that I didn’t realize was still clenched.

I’m ridiculously happy.

That’s the dumb truth of it. I’m lying here after one of the worst nights I’ve had in a while, with a new watch on my sink and shame still dried into my skin no matter how hard I scrubbed. All it takes to make me feel lighter is Eli in my bed mumbling half-awake about his day and trusting me enough to come here when he could’ve slept anywhere else in the house.

He turns onto his side at some point, facing me now, one hand tucked under his cheek. In the dark, his heavy-lidded eyes are soft, hair falling over his forehead, mouth relaxed in a way it almost never is during the day.

The words start to slur slightly as he gets sleepier, his sentences losing structure, looping back once or twice before he corrects himself. He goes quiet for long enough that I think he’s done, but after a few seconds, he murmurs, “I’m glad I came in.”

The confession is so soft I almost think I imagined it.

I turn my head toward him. His eyes are closed. His face has gone slack in that vulnerable way sleep starts to pull from people before they’re all the way under. He looks younger—softer. So unbearably dear to me that I have to bite down on my own response.

“I’m glad too,” I answer anyway, just as quietly.

He hums something that might be an agreement. Then his breathing evens out by degrees, long and slow, until I realize he’s gone.

I stay still and let the happiness sit where the self-loathing had been trying to live earlier.

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