Chapter 86: Oliver Reyes Wants To Cuddle Too
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The issues with finally getting a good night’s sleep after months fueled by caffeine, stubbornness, and various poor life choices came with a catch: my body was all too aware of the change.
And once it realized what was happening, there was no way to go back; it had experienced real rest and now acted like a tiny tyrant, demanding attention and completely disregarding my dignity, denial, and emotional barriers.
It seemed my body had turned traitor.
That was the only explanation I could come up with. Because all day long, even after everything that transpired that morning, from flinging Damien off the bed like a goddamn human catapult to the loud thud that echoed through the apartment, not to mention almost giving us both a heart attack before we could even sip our coffee...one persistent thought kept looping in my mind like a catchy song I couldn’t shake off.
I slept well.
Every time it popped up, I tried to shove it down.
But it resurfaced. I really slept well.
I silently wondered into the kitchen... the food as usual smelled incredible. Dangerously incredible. The kind of good that makes you second-guess your appetite.
"Hey."
Damien’s voice floated in from the kitchen.
Have we reached the point that he sensed my presence without seeing me?
I dropped my bag by the couch. "What gave it away?"
"The door opening."
"Oh."
"And the fact that you’re standing there in the entryway, staring into the kitchen like a starving Victorian orphan."
I scowled at him. "I do not look like a Victorian orphan."
Despite my pride, dinner smelled too good to not wander over. The setup wasn’t fancy, just pasta in a simple cream sauce, garlic bread sizzling under the broiler, and a salad that looked way healthier than anything I’d whip up.
"This smells amazing."
A pleased grin spread across his face, but he tried to tone it down, failing a bit. "I know."
"There he is."
"There who is?"
"The ego, right on cue."
"Look who’s talking." He pressed a hand to his chest in mock offense. "I worked hard on this."
I snorted, earning me a tiny smile from him, and I was surprised at how easily my laughter came. His smile felt less threatening than it had weeks ago; not entirely safe, but definitely less like standing too close to a fire.
Dinner unfolded in easy conversation. Not the usual apartment noise filled with bickering and deflecting but just light comments tossed back and forth while we ate.
I grumbled about a professor who assigned impossible readings and shared a story from the flower shop about a customer who wanted to pick roses based solely on her ex-boyfriend’s zodiac sign, a request I apparently handled with more patience than I knew I had.
"She wanted Scorpio-coded flowers," I said. "I told her flowers don’t have star signs."
"What did she say?"
"She asked if red roses were ’too Aries.’"
Damien actually laughed, genuinely, and I felt inexplicably happy about it.
The conversation eventually shifted to pizza, specifically pineapple — and whether it belonged on pizza. To me, that debate was settled, but Damien clearly thought otherwise.
"It’s a textural nightmare," I said. "Warm fruit has no business being near cheese."
"It balances the saltiness, so I see why people like it."
"That’s not balance, that’s just chaos wearing a freaking disguise."
"You’re being dramatic."
"I’m being right, which may look dramatic to people who are wrong."
He shook his head, smiling, clearly enjoying this way too much to actually concede the point, which frustrated me because I knew I was right.
By the time we finished dinner, the apartment settled into a comfortable peace that crept up on me, the type you feel when you’re used to someone’s presence enough that you can just sit in silence without needing to fill it.
We lingered there for a moment after clearing the plates, enjoying the quiet, and it didn’t feel like something needed fixing.
Which was, in hindsight, a concerning thought.
I chose to ignore it. Some things are better left unexamined. Like suspicious leftovers tax forms and my feelings. Especially my feelings, which had developed the annoying habit of surfacing at the worst times and demanding attention I wasn’t willing to give.
I retreated to my study desk, fired up my psychology essay, holding onto the hope that perhaps productivity was still possible for the evening.
If I could mention just one perk of living in Preston Hall, it was the free laptop for every room. I wasn’t sure why they would have one, because the students here already had theirs...but who cares, it benefitted me greatly!
The cursor blinked.
I stared at it.
It kept blinking back, with the kind of patience of something that knows it can wait as long as it needs while I don’t.
I typed a sentence, deleted it, tried again and deleted that too. Behind me, Damien had settled into the couch with his tablet, the soft sound of a page turning the only interruption to the silence.
Nothing distracting, nothing loud. And still, I couldn’t focus, my attention slipping off the screen every few seconds like it had somewhere else to be.
Theories of attachment suggest...
My fingers froze.
Attachment.
"Absolutely not," I muttered, hitting delete with way more force than necessary.
I tried again. The role of emotional security...
I groaned and shut the document, reopening it right after because quitting wasn’t solving anything; it was just hiding the issue temporarily, which summed up most of my coping methods lately.
The assignment wasn’t the problem. The problem was how my brain spent the whole day rewinding a highlight reel I hadn’t approved, the hockey game, the kiss, how that morning felt before I messed it up with a shout and a shove, the warmth that lingered with me through a shift at the flower shop, a hospital visit, and a walk home.
I rested my forehead on the desk.
"This is ridiculous," I murmured to the wood grain.
"What is?" Damien asked without looking up from his book.
I straightened up immediately. "Nothing."
"Hmm."
I hated that sound. Just that one neutral, infuriating sound that managed to hint at a whole conversation in a single syllable, and the worst part was he never elaborated, leaving me to stew in it.
Eventually, through sheer stubbornness, I pushed myself into writing mode. The essay came together slowly, a paragraph, then another. The cursor finally played nice once I stopped resisting and let the sentences come in whatever order they wanted.
By the time I glanced at the clock, it was well past eleven, then midnight, and my eyes felt heavy enough that I figured sleep would be on the horizon soon.
I was wrong.
I brushed my teeth, changed into something comfortable, climbed into bed, and turned off the light.
And waited.
Five minutes passed, then ten, then thirty. Each one stretching longer than the last, my brain apparently deciding this was the perfect time to review the entire week in painstaking detail.
I rolled onto my side, then my back, then the other side. The pillow just felt wrong...either too flat, too firm, or not arranged the right way; I couldn’t tell what would even feel right.
The blanket felt wrong. The room felt too quiet in a way it hadn’t before, which made no sense since it was the same room it had always been.
"This is fucking ridiculous," I said to the ceiling.
The ceiling, predictably, had nothing to contribute.
I was exhausted. Genuinely, thoroughly exhausted, the sort of tired that should’ve knocked me out in minutes. Instead, my thoughts kept wandering to the same unhelpful territory: the kiss cam, the limo, the closet from weeks ago, that morning, the feeling of an arm around my waist and steady breaths against my neck.
I buried my face in the pillow. "No."
The pillow had no advice to give. Really unhelpful, considering how much I’d been relying on it lately for emotional support.
Outside, the world glowed through the window, casting a gentle light against the dark sky. Inside, the apartment had silence that comfortably stretches when nobody’s awake to disturb it, except me, apparently, wide-awake while sleep remained just out of reach.
Across in the room, Damien was likely asleep. Probably peacefully. Probably without a single complicated thought in his head.
Lucky bastard.
I checked my phone. 1:03 AM.
My eye twitched, this had crossed the line from inconvenient to downright absurd.
In a fit of frustration, I threw the blanket aside, instantly regretting it as the room grew noticeably colder. That’s when the thought hit me...slowly at first, then with a momentum that could only come from something that had been circling in my mind for a while.
The only night I’d slept properly in months was the night Damien shared my bed.
The only one.
Fuck...
I stared at the ceiling, which continued its silent treatment as usual. The whole apartment was being remarkably unhelpful tonight.
For several long minutes, I lay there, my dignity engaging in a losing battle with my exhaustion. Dignity put up a decent fight, but exhaustion ultimately triumphed.
I sat up. Then flopped back down.
Nope! Absolutely not, I was not going to do this. I was not going to ask him to sleep with me!
Five minutes later, I stood next to his bed, clutching my pillow against my chest like it was a shield, having clearly decided I was going to do this, my body overriding everything else with sheer fatigue.