The first thing Cole felt was the ache in his head. A dull, pounding rhythm behind his temples, the kind that came with too much alcohol and too many mistakes. He blinked against the sunlight slipping through the curtains, forcing his eyes open, and for a moment—just a moment—he forgot where he was.

Then the room came into focus. His room. The posters still tacked crooked on the wall, the pile of laundry he hadn’t bothered with, the familiar shape of Danny’s empty bed across from his own. Sunday morning in a house that never slept, voices echoing faintly from the kitchen below, footsteps creaking on the stairs. Normal. Everything about it looked normal.

But it wasn’t.

Because when he shifted, when he turned his head ever so slightly, he saw you. Curled up in his sheets, hair spilling across his pillow like a secret he wasn’t supposed to keep. And that’s when the memories hit.

The fight. The party he’d wrecked. The anger that burned too hot in his chest, fists flying until someone dragged him off. The way he’d stumbled back to the ranch, reckless, furious, drowning in whiskey and shame. And then— You. Standing in the doorway, worry in your eyes. You’d come because you heard. Because you cared enough to check on him. And he hadn’t deserved that. He hadn’t deserved you.

Cole sat up slowly, elbows braced on his knees, trying to quiet the storm in his head. His body remembered what happened before his heart would let him. The way he pulled you close, the way he kissed you like he was starving, the way the night blurred until everything was heat and skin and the desperate need to forget.

And now here you were. In his bed. In his life. And he didn’t know what the hell to do with that.

He hated himself for it—for letting it happen this way. Because this wasn’t how it was supposed to be with you. You weren’t another Paige, another Erin, another mistake scribbled into the messy margins of his story. You were supposed to be different. Clean. New. Someone he hadn’t ruined yet.

His chest tightened as he pressed his palms against his face, dragging them down slowly. The house was full, the world was moving on like nothing happened, like it was just another Sunday morning. But he knew better. Everything had shifted.

And the worst part? He wanted you. He wanted you in a way that terrified him, in a way he couldn’t admit, not even to himself. Because if he said it out loud, if he let himself believe it, then it was real. And real meant he could lose it. Lose you. "Damn... damn... damn"