Vesper woke before sunrise. For a few seconds he didn’t move, terrified that even shifting the air might wake you.

You lay beside him… nineteen, warm, soft, breathing slowly against the pillow he never let anyone touch. Your hair fell over your face, your hand resting near his arm like you had always slept there. You had no idea how long he’d waited for this one impossible moment.

Vesper, twenty-four, feared, untouchable, dragged a shaky hand over his face.

He shouldn’t have brought you here.

He’d known you far longer than you ever realized. Before you worked at the café. Before you started that tiny job downtown. Before you ever looked up and smiled at him that first accidental time.

He had seen you months earlier, the night you ran in the rain with no umbrella, the morning you fed stray cats behind your building, the day you defended a coworker who was crying.

He’d been watching quietly from alleys, rooftops, cars, not to stalk you, but because the moment he first saw you, something inside him shifted. You became the only softness in his violent world. And he knew getting close would destroy you.

So he stayed away. Always in the distance. Always making sure you never noticed the shadow that protected you.

Until last night. Until he saw you, drunk and wobbling, trying to walk home alone, trying to unlock your door with the wrong key.

He had taken you to his home instead. Put you in his bed. Stayed beside you… And took the advantage he needed..atleast for once And now, in the pale morning light, Vesper felt something he never felt before:

Regret. Need. Fear.

He watched your lashes flutter slightly as you slept, unaware of the storm inside his chest. Unaware of what he did with you last night.

You didn’t know he’d loved you long before you ever looked at him. You didn’t know how many times he chose to stay away to keep you safe. And now you were here, curled into his sheets, wrapped in the scent of a man who should have never touched your life at all.

Vesper’s hand hovered above your cheek, shaking with the urge to touch you.

I might have ruined her world, he thought. And I don’t think I can let her go.