Page 40 of Beautiful When He Breaks

Eli

I wake up slowly enough that for a few perfect seconds I don’t know why I feel warm and steady and safe.

That deep, body-level comfort that only happens when I’ve fallen asleep for real instead of drifting in and out while one part of my brain keeps watch.

My face is pressed to something firm and warm beneath a soft T-shirt. My arm is tucked in close. One of my legs is thrown over someone else’s. There’s a steady heartbeat under my ear, and the rise and fall of another chest beneath my cheek is working through me like a sedative.

The mattress smells faintly of detergent and the same body wash I’ve known on instinct for years. My brain catches up to my body all at once, and every muscle in me goes tight under the blanket.

Julian.

I’m in Julian’s bed. I’m halfway on top of him because sometime in the night, my body decided that curling into my best friend was the most natural thing in the world. Which, to be fair, once upon a time, it probably was.

Oh, fuck.

I stay exactly where I am for a second too long, because if I move too fast, I’ll turn this into something. But if I stay still, maybe I can get my shit together before the panic starts making decisions for me.

We’ve slept in the same bed before. There were sleepovers when we were kids, road trips when we were older, the occasional party or late-night movie where one of us passed out in the wrong room and neither of us cared enough to make it weird. We’ve shared blankets on couches and laughed it off because that’s what boys who’ve known each other forever do when they’re comfortable enough in each other’s space.

Except none of those mornings happened after I started noticing him differently.

Now I’m wide awake with my face pressed to my best friend’s chest and my body noticing way too much.

Like the fact that I’m very aware of exactly what part of him my thigh is near, and I hate myself instantly for even thinking about it.

This is bad. This is really, really fucking bad because I don’t think this is random anymore. I don’t think it’s just stress or gratitude or my mind reaching for comfort and getting confused. I think something’s happening in me that I haven’t let myself look at directly because it keeps arriving in the middle of too many other disasters, and if I stop long enough to really examine it, I might break something I can’t put back together.

Before I can make myself do the right thing and get up, the bedroom door slams open hard enough that it makes me jolt, and I almost knee Julian in the dick.

“Rise and shine, you useless bastards,” Killian says.

Julian wakes at the same time with a rough, disoriented curse, his arm dropping away from me as he blinks up at the ceiling.

“Jisis, what the fuck is wrong with you?” he growls, voice thick with sleep and irritation. “Has nobody ever taught you how to knock, you psychopath?”

Killian stands in the doorway, fully dressed, expression completely unimpressed by the fact that he just nearly sent both of us into cardiac arrest.

“I did knock,” he lies calmly. “You were too dead to hear it. Get up. Mrs. Alvarez will be here in an hour, Luca wants Eli downstairs before he goes to class, and if either of you sleeps much longer, I’m gonna start making protein oats for everyone out of spite.”

“I’m going to kill you in your sleep,” Julian mutters.

“Get in line,” Killian replies.

I sit up slowly, schooling every inch of my face into something calm and normal and not at all reflective of the absolute chaos going on inside me. My pulse is still hammering from the shock of the door and from the much worse shock of being caught in that position, even if Killian almost certainly doesn’t care about anything except the fact that we’re alive and late. Still, I can feel the heat in my neck, and the awareness of Julian beside me.

He turns his head toward me, still half asleep, curls a mess, eyes squinting against the light from the hall. “Morning,” he says, voice rough.

“Morning,” I say back, and somehow it sounds fine. Casual. Normal. Thank God.

If he notices anything off, he doesn’t show it. He just yawns, stretches both arms over his head in a way that makes the hem of his sleep shirt ride up enough to expose a strip of tattooed skin and muscle, and drops them again with another low curse.

“You’re a prick,” he tells Killian.

Killian shrugs. “Mila has been awake for an hour, which means Eli should be too, unless you want me to put her on your chest every morning and let her scream directly into your soul.”

That gets my attention through the embarrassment fast.

“Mila’s up?” I immediately ask, already throwing the blanket back and swinging my feet to the floor.