[BOOK2]
Friendship built their world. Love will break it open. ❤️
*****
I want her.
I want her more than I've ever wanted anything.
But I can't have her. Because the moment I admit that out loud, the moment I risk everything we've built, I could lo...
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Isla was asleep.
Her breath rose and fell softly against my chest, every exhale brushing my skin like a whispered promise I hadn't earned. Her fingers curled against my stomach, the pads of them twitching now and then like she was holding on to something even in sleep. Or maybe just trying not to let go.
I hadn't moved in an hour. Not because I was tired. I wasn't. My mind was wide awake, heart beating too hard, too loud. But I couldn't move—not when she was like this. Folded into me, like she needed something solid. And if she needed it, I'd be it. I'd be anything.
For her, I'd always be anything.
But something was wrong.
I felt it the second I walked into her dorm. The lie in her smile. The way her hug was a second too tight, like she was afraid I might slip through her fingers. She said it was school. Finals. Pressure. Asked me to stay like she always did—but there was a crack in her voice this time, one she didn't even notice. One I felt all the way down to my bones.
She was scared.
And it wasn't because of school.
I ran my hand down her back, slow and steady, tracing each vertebra like they were my only tether to reality. Just to remind her I was here. That she wasn't alone, even if she couldn't say what was going on. Even if she was too afraid to let me in.
She trembled in her sleep.
Tiny, involuntary flinches like she was stuck inside something her mind wouldn't let her leave. Her breath hitched. Her whole body tightened. And my chest ached in the kind of way that made it hard to breathe.
She was breaking.
Quietly. Carefully. Silently.
And it made me want to wreck the world just to put her back together.
Whatever it was—whoever it was—I wanted to fix it. To carry it. Burn it to the ground if that's what it took.
Because this girl?
She wasn't just mine.
She was it.
And it terrified me. The way my entire goddamn heart lived in her hands and she didn't even know it.
******
The first golden rays of morning slipped through her window, brushing against her cheek like the sun couldn't resist touching her either.
She stirred, soft lashes fluttering before she burrowed deeper into my chest, sighing like she wasn't ready to face the world yet.
And fuck, I didn't want to move.
But I had training in an hour.
I needed to get home. Shower. Pretend like I hadn't spent the night holding the only girl who could break me in ways no one else could.
