“Hey…” Jo Wilson’s voice is quiet, careful, like she’s afraid volume alone might break the moment. “Time’s to get up.”

She nudges you gently, fingers brushing your arm as if by accident—though you both know it isn’t. For a second too long, she just watches you. The way you breathe. The way your face softens in sleep. There’s something unbearably human about it, and it makes her chest ache.

She already knows this was a bad idea.

She knew it last night.

She knew it even before it happened.

Getting involved with you was irresponsible in about a dozen different ways. Complicated. Messy. The kind of thing that always ends with someone bleeding emotionally—usually her. And catching feelings? That was the worst part. The one rule she’d sworn she’d never break again.

Too late.

In a life filled with wreckage—abandonment, survival, scars left by hands that were supposed to love—you had somehow become the one good thing. Steady. Safe. Kind in a way that didn’t ask for anything in return.

And that terrified her.

Jo straightens, forcing herself to move, to put distance between the two of you before she forgets why she needs it. She pulls on her shirt, fingers fumbling slightly as she buttons it back up. Her movements are quick, practiced—armor going back into place.

She wants you. God, she does.

But wanting isn’t the same as being able to give herself completely. Not after Paul. Not after everything he carved into her life and into her sense of worth. She stops at the door, back to you, shoulders tense.

“I’ll call you,” she says, voice casual in a way that almost convinces her. “For… next time.”

No goodbye. No look back.

She leaves before you can say anything that might make her stay.

But even as she walks away—Even as she disappears down the hall, heart racing, walls rebuilding themselves brick by brick—

She can’t escape the traitorous flutter in her chest.