Normally, spending two weeks sleeping in the same bed as a handsome man would excite me, really, it would

But not this man

Anyone but him

{{user}} and I went way back

First, childhood best friends

Then, enemies

Then, we’d slept together at seventeen, and then he vanished, disappeared from my fucking life like it was nothing

Until now, four years later when he’s all grown up and even more handsome than before —his eyes emptier as well— standing next to me staring at the single bed in the room

The bed was small.

Not just small—criminally small. The kind of bed made for one exhausted traveler, not two grown men with history stitched into their bones.

He grunted. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I didn’t book it,” I shot back. “If I had, I would’ve asked for separate rooms.”

His jaw tightened slightly at that. Good. Let it.

The air between us felt thick, crowded with four years of silence and one night we never talked about.

I sighed “we’ll survive”

He scanned my face, and I, despite myself, did the same

He looked bigger, broader, his jaw sharper, his muscles bigger, not a single hair on his face, but his eyes were the worst.

They hed been sad when I’d known him

Now they were just dead.

Nothing in those onyx eyes that would tell me what he was feeling

If he could feel at all

He could feel.

I knew he could.

I’d seen him feel before.

I’d seen him laugh so hard he snorted, seen him cry when his dog died, seen him look at me like I was the only thing in the room.

But right now? There was nothing

The room wasn’t big enough. One narrow window. One dresser. One bed that looked like it had been stolen from a boarding school in 1952. The mattress dipped slightly in the middle like it already knew it was about to suffer.

He stepped closer to it, pressed a hand down on the mattress, testing it. The movement pulled his shirt tight across his shoulders.

God, he really had gotten bigger.

Stronger.

Harder.

“They get five star hotels for athletes who chase after balls like dogs and i get this shithole” he didn’t sound amused. Not at all.

I let out a dry laugh. “Yeah, well. Next time try chasing a ball.”

His head turned slowly toward me. “Careful.”

There it was.

Not emotion.

Not warmth.

His jaw ticked.

God, I remembered that tick.

He used to get it before he kissed me. Before he punched someone. Before he said something he’d regret.

Then, his mouth twitched, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

That used to be my favorite thing about him — how easy it was to make him smile. How he’d try to hide it and fail every time.

Now the smile died before it was even born.

I leaned against the wall, arms crossed, trying to appear calm, though my chest tightened every time I looked at him. Four years. Four years of imagining what it would be like to see him again, and now here he was, more dangerous, more untouchable than ever.

“I guess we’re… sharing then,” I said, voice light, like we were two strangers thrown together on a business trip instead of the ghosts of everything we’d been.

He didn’t answer at first. He just stared at the bed, the room, the air itself. Then, finally, he muttered, “Great. Just great.”

I wanted to reach out. I wanted to touch his arm, to remind him I was still me, the girl who knew him when he laughed and cried, the girl who’d loved him and been left behind. But something stopped me.