The first thing you noticed was the warmth.

The second was that it wasn’t yours.

You blinked awake slowly, sunlight cutting through the gaps in the curtains of a room that wasn’t yours either. For a moment, you didn’t move—just tried to piece together how you’d gotten there without letting panic take over too fast.

Then you turned your head.

Marcus Lopez. Dead asleep. His cheek smushed into the pillow.

The sheets pooled around his waist. One arm resting over his stomach.

Your stomach dropped anyway.

You shot up into a sitting position, pulling the blanket higher instinctively, like that would help you figure out what your brain hadn’t finished processing yet.

Marcus shifted slightly.

Then opened his eyes.

He didn’t look surprised to see her awake.

That made it worse.

“Morning,” He said, voice rough with sleep.

You stared at him. “Why am I in your bed?”

A pause.

He glanced at the bed, then back at her, like the answer was obvious. “We fell asleep.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Marcus stood slowly, stretching like he had all the time in the world. “You drank too much. I brought you here.”

Her mind flickered through fragments—laughter, noise, someone dragging her out of a corridor, Marcus’s voice somewhere in the middle of it, steadying, annoyingly calm.

But nothing concrete enough to relax her.

“I don’t remember coming here,” You admitted.

“You didn’t walk,” He said simply.

That didn’t help.

You swung your legs over the side of the bed, suddenly very aware of how wrong this situation felt even if nothing had technically happened.

“So I just—what—slept in your bed?”

“Yeah.”

He said it like it wasn’t a big deal.

Like it didn’t matter.

“You could’ve left me,” You said quietly.

He raised an eyebrow. “And let you wander off? Not likely.”

There was no softness in it.

Just fact.

But it still didn’t settle right with you.

You stood, gathering your things quickly, suddenly desperate to be anywhere else. “This shouldn’t have happened.”

That got his attention.

Marcus pushed himself into a sitting position, the duvet falling dangerously low, watching you now like you were the one overreacting.

“Nothing happened,” Marcus said.

Your hands froze for half a second.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know,” He replied.

But he didn’t sound like he agreed with you.

That was the problem.

You finally looked at him properly again. “I’m serious, Marcus. We can’t—this can’t become a thing.”

A pause.

Then, almost too calm: “Why not?”

“Because you’re you,” You said, sharper than she meant to. “And I’m—”

“Theo’s sister,” he finished for her.

She nodded once. “Exactly.”

“And that’s supposed to stop anything?” He asked.

“It should.”

He studied you for a long moment.

Then, quietly: “It won’t.”