TWENTY THREE

The moment the door clicked shut behind us, I exhaled like I hadn’t been breathing all day.

Diana Morano had a special gift—a quiet, laser-focused ability to make every second of interaction feel like an interrogation. From breakfast to dinner, every sip of wine, every movement, every glance Wesley and I exchanged had been measured and noted. She didn’t say much. She didn’t need to. Her presence alone had done all the talking.

I kicked off my shoes, eyes burning from holding polite expressions too long, and walked farther into the room—only to stop dead.

There it was.

One bed.

Big. Clean. Beautiful. And completely unforgiving.

I glanced at Wesley. He looked at it, too. Just for a second.

Silence stretched.

“I’ll take the floor,” I said quickly, already regretting the words as they left my mouth.

Wesley didn’t even look at me. “Don’t be dramatic.”

“I’m not being dramatic.”

“You are.”

I crossed my arms. “You’re the one who told your mother I’d be sleeping in here.”

“She’d ask more questions if you weren’t.”

“Great,” I muttered. “So now I get to be your alibi and your pillow buddy.”

Wesley didn’t respond. He walked around the bed, pulled back the covers, and said, “We’ll build a wall.”

I blinked. “A what?”

“A wall,” he repeated. “Pillows. Line them down the center. Like kids at summer camp.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. But after the day I’d had, I didn’t have the energy for either.

“Fine,” I muttered.

He went to brush his teeth. I grabbed my things and locked myself in the bathroom. I changed quickly, tied my hair up, stared at my reflection for a few seconds too long, then returned to find the infamous wall already constructed. Five pillows stacked between our sides. Neat, deliberate, ridiculous.

Wesley was already in bed. Shirtless, of course.

He lay on his side, one arm folded under the pillow, the covers low on his waist. His eyes were closed, but I could tell he wasn’t asleep.

I slipped in quietly on my side of the bed, pulling the blanket over me and turning away from him.

The silence stretched again.

I stared at the ceiling. The air between us wasn’t angry, just… thick. Humming. Like it knew we were pretending too hard.

No words. No movement. Just two people, one bed, and a pile of pillows between them.

I didn’t close my eyes.

Neither did he.

Sometime around 3 a.m., I woke up to warmth.

Not just blanket warmth—body warmth. Solid. Close. Familiar in a way it absolutely should not have been.

I blinked, slowly, letting my eyes adjust to the dark room.

The pillow wall was gone. Not just shifted or nudged—but fully collapsed, a few pillows scattered down at the foot of the bed like they’d given up halfway through the night.

And somehow, in the mess of it, I’d ended up here—pressed into Wesley’s chest, his arm lazily slung over my waist, hand resting just a little too low on my hip.

His breath ghosted against my ear in soft, even intervals. He was asleep, or pretending to be. I couldn’t tell.

I was wide awake.

My body stiffened, unsure of its place, unsure of how it had gotten here without alerting my brain. One of my legs was tangled with his. His skin was warm, bare, smooth. And the way his hand curved against me—possessive without meaning to be—made every nerve in my body light up like someone had flipped a switch.

I didn’t move.

Because I couldn’t.

Because I didn’t want to, and that scared me more than anything.

The silence in the room wasn’t just silence. It was charged. Buzzing. Like even the shadows were watching us closely, waiting to see who would break first.

His fingers twitched slightly against my hip, and my breath caught in my throat.

Still, he didn’t speak.

Didn’t shift.

Didn’t push me away.

But he didn’t pull me closer either.

It was like we were both frozen in this strange, intimate standoff neither of us had planned.

I shut my eyes, trying to slow the rapid pounding of my heart, telling myself to relax. To just breathe. To not overthink the fact that this was the closest I’d ever been to Wesley Morano—and that for some reason, it didn’t feel like a mistake.

It felt like something else.

Something dangerous.

The morning hit like a slap.

The bedroom door creaked open—not a knock, not a warning, just a quiet, confident push—and in walked Diana Morano with two cups of coffee in hand like she owned the place. Which, to be fair, she kind of did.

The sunlight behind her was brutal, flooding the room and cutting through the quiet like a blade.

“Well,” she said dryly, her heels clicking against the hardwood as she crossed the room, “nice to know one of you sleeps well. Or are you just not an early riser, dear?”

My eyes flew open, panic blooming in my chest.

I was still curled up against Wesley—my leg slung over his, his arm loosely draped around me. It wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been at 3 a.m., but it was still… not great. Especially not under the scrutinizing gaze of that woman.

I shot up so fast I nearly knocked the covers off the bed. “I—I was just—”

Wesley, completely unfazed, sat up and ran a hand through his hair before slipping out of bed without saying a word. He didn’t acknowledge his mother. Didn’t look at me. Just grabbed a towel from the chair and walked straight into the bathroom, closing the door behind him like he hadn’t just left me to deal with the aftermath.

I sat there awkwardly, still tangled in the sheets, trying to remember how to form a full sentence. Diana placed the coffee down on the nightstand with surgical precision, eyes scanning the room like she was cataloging things.

“I’ll let you two get ready,” she said, tone clipped. “We’ll talk later.”

And then, just as smoothly as she entered, she was gone.

I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding, sinking back against the pillows. My heart was still racing, but now for an entirely different reason.

Because that’s when I saw it.

The red file.

Or more specifically—the absence of it.

The spot on the nightstand where it had been the last time I’d seen it was empty. No folder. No paper. No trace it had ever been there.

I stared at the space, chest tightening, thoughts already spinning.

Did Wesley move it?

Or had someone else been in here while we slept?

Either way…

It was gone.