Rolling over doesn’t help. Neither does staring at the ceiling. My body remembers his nearness like a phantom limb, aching for what was just out of reach.
I push up, feet hitting the cool floor. Three steps to the window, two back. Moonlight glints off the framed photo of Beckett, gap-toothed and grinning. Our son. Warren’s son.
The bathroom will have to be my refuge. I twist the faucet, watching steam curl up from the tub. In the mirror, my reflection is flushed and I look more tired than I feel.
I flick off the overhead light, strike a candle, and pour lavender Epsom salt into the water. The scent fills the air as the water rises. If I can’t lose myself in him, maybe I can burn it out of me this way.
I slide into the scalding water.
My body trembles, and it’s not from the heat. It’s Warren, the brush of his knee against mine, the shift of his shoulders as he leaned toward me, the breath between us when we almost kissed.
I sink deeper, water lapping at my collarbone.
He walked away.
But the truth is sharper. He didn’t look like a man who wanted to leave. He looked like a man barely holding himself back.
My fingers drift across my stomach, sliding lower intothe water. I imagine his hands instead of mine, his mouth at my neck, his voice murmuring my name.
“This is dangerous,” I breathe, even as a low ache pulses inside me, insistent and unrelenting.
Not the bath. Not the touch. The wanting. Wanting Warren after everything curls low in my stomach, recklessly, as if I’ve set a match to something I can’t put out.
Yet here I am, trembling in a cooling bath, my body alive with the thought of him inside me.
I know better. But hope is a stubborn thing, burrowing beneath my skin, impossible to dislodge.
Morning sunlight spillsacross the park, turning dewdrops into diamonds on the cool morning grass. I sip my coffee, watching Beckett tear across the field with a pack of neighborhood kids.
His high, bright, and completely uninhibited laughter carries on the crisp air.
I pull out my phone to touch base with Gemma. She left Savannah yesterday to fly back to San Antonio for Thanksgiving, so she's probably elbows-deep into helping her mom get everything ready.
"Hey, Phantom of Palm Beach," she answers as I tug my sweatshirt tighter around me.
I wave at Beckett as he looks over from the top of the climbing wall to see if I see him.
"Phantom?"
"You've sent me to voicemail for the last two days. Are you going to tell me about the fair, or do I need to drag it out of you?"
I sink back into the bench. "I'm sorry. I do have a job during the day, Lady. There's nothing to tell."
"What evs. You texted me that the three of you went to the fair together with twenty-five emojis. 'Nothing to tell' doesn't warrant that many emojis."
Her laugh fills my ear as I chew on my thumbnail.
Heat crawls up my neck. "I'm serious. Nothing happened. It was just a nice night. I guess I was in a good mood."
"Your voice goes up when you lie. Dead giveaway."
I watch Beckett change direction, legs pumping as he swings higher on the swing, now.
"Look, nothing happened, but more of that slightly better I told you about. It honestly was just a fun night. Almost like we were a family."
"Mmm hmm," she hums into the phone, like she doesn't believe me.
"And last night, we almost kissed."