Page 304 of Safe With You

“I’m learning.”

I smiled and pulled her closer.

This time, when the quiet settled around us, neither of us tried to fill it.

The first thing I remembered when I woke up was his mouth on mine.

The second thing I remembered made me pull the sheet a little higher.

I closed my eyes again.

Lord.

For a few seconds, I lay there beneath the covers with last night coming back to me in pieces.

Ellis in my kitchen.

I want you.

His hand wrapped around mine.

The way he looked at me.

The way⁠—

Okay.

I opened my eyes to morning light slipping through the gap in my curtains and falling across the end of the bed.

I stared at the ceiling for a second before a smile pulled at my mouth, then reached beside me.

My hand met an empty sheet.

The smile disappeared.

I turned my head, but Ellis wasn’t there. His side of the bed was empty, the pillow no longer carrying the shape of his head, and when I looked toward the floor, I realized his shirt and jeans were gone too.

Something dropped low in my stomach.

I reached for my phone on the nightstand.

8:14 a.m.

There was no message from him.

I unlocked my phone anyway and checked, as if one might somehow appear once I was looking for it.

Nothing.

For one stupid second, I sat there staring at the screen.

He left.

The thought came so quickly I didn’t have time to stop it. Maybe he woke up early or didn’t want to wake me. There were a dozen perfectly reasonable explanations, and somehow my mind skipped every one of them.

I threw the sheet back and reached for the T-shirt hanging over the chair beside my dresser.

This was ridiculous. Ellis didn’t owe me some formal checkout procedure because he spent the night.