Chapter 332

Evaline:
For a moment my hand hung in the air, clutched around River’s forearm as if I could hold him there with the weight of my grip alone. The world narrowed to the warmth of his skin beneath my fingers and the steady, low hum of the fireplace on the other side of the room.
There were nearly a dozen sensible things I should have said – thank you, please, can you stay for a while, can we talk – but they all died on the tip of my tongue. In their place, an odd, panicked blankness spread through my mind, leaving me with nothing but a hollow, ridiculous certainty that I had no idea what to say or do next.
I hadn’t meant to stop him like this. Though there was something I needed to tell him, I hadn’t prepared anything… or better to say – I felt like I wasn’t prepared enough. Yet, here we were – one hand on his arm, my chest tightening with a nervousness that made my fingers tingle.
Silence pooled between us. It was a thick, expectant silence that seemed to press against my skin, waiting for me to speak. I kept my eyes fixed on the small, delicate line of his wrist where my thumb had settled. It felt like the only honest thing I had in that moment.
He cleared his throat. It was a small sound, gentle, but it broke the silence with the soft authority I had come to recognize when he was unsure and wanted me to take the lead. “Evaline,” he said quietly, “is there… something you wanted to say? Or something you need from me?”
His voice wrapped around me like the first cautious light of morning. I should have been able to string words together – simple requests, a thank-you, a more coherent explanation for why I had held him back.
Instead, all the rehearsed, reasonable sentences scattered like dry leaves, and the only thing that came out was the last thing I expected my own mouth to produce.
“Do you-do you want to sleep with me?” The question tumbled out before I could stop it. It hung in the air, sounding far clumsier and more exposed than I had intended.
My brain registered the words a heartbeat after my ear had and heat immediately flooded my face.
What in the name of stars, Eva?
My cheeks flamed hot enough that I could feel the warmth all the way up into my ears. Immediately, a cold, horrified panic clawed at my throat. I slapped the other hand down across my mouth as if that could somehow take the sentence back.
“No-no, I mean-” I scrambled for salvage. “Not like that. I didn’t mean… I just meant – sleep. You know, stay the night. Nothing else.” My words came out in a breathless rush, each syllable a small apology.
But even the explanation didn’t do anything to calm me down. I didn’t even know why I proposed such a thing to him out of nowhere. This wasn’t on my mind at all when I stopped him from leaving.
So, instead of stopping at the bad explanation, I continued to babble on. I was way too flustered to pause “Actually, it’s late. I thought… I just wanted some company. Not that I-stars, I didn’t mean it like-”
His face didn’t change at all as I struggled to fix the mess. It remained the stoic, unreadable mask he almost always wore, the face that bottled his emotions behind those deep-green eyes.
But I couldn’t miss the tiny lift at the corner of his mouth. It was the faintest, almost imperceptible curve that hinted at amusement. It made my embarrassment triple.
I shut my eyes tight and internally scolded myself, so harshly I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from crying out.
How had I gone from holding a simple thought in my head to blurting out the sort of nonsense that had me blushing and stumbling for excuses?
The real reason I had stopped him… now sat like a calm pool behind a veil of shame. I had meant to tell him something else entirely. Something that I had been wanting to say for a while. But now… now I had not only messed up the mood but I even succeed in embarrassing myself.
I swallowed and opened my eyes. “Don’t mind me,” I said, and if my voice wavered, I didn’t blame it. “I… what I just said was complete nonsense. I-I don’t even know why I said it
At this point, the more I was speaking, the more foolish I was feeling. So, I decided to just wrap it up. “It’s late. You should go… go to your room. Get some sleep. I’ll get some as well. Good night.” The source of this content ɪs.net
I reached blindly for the blanket at my feet, my fingers fumbling through the soft fabric as if I could cloak away my blush with the weave of cotton. I began to pull it up, intent on covering my face and my embarrassment in the same motion.
But his next words stopped me in my tracks. They were slow, deliberate. His deep voice sounded almost amused in a way that both flattered and mortified me.
“Accepted,” he said simply. “I will sleep with you.”
He stressed the word ’sleep’ with a deliberate emphasis that made the heat in my face spike again.
I froze with the blanket half raised to my chin. I quickly looked up and found him walking up to the other side before he climbed onto the bed. And I found myself noticing how his movements were deliberately, without the slightest rush.
He folded himself beneath the blanket with the efficiency of a man used to making calculated movements. He reached for the bedside remote, switched the overhead lights off, and then turned off the lamp on his side.
Even if I said something so stupid, I wasn’t expecting to him to actually agree. But here we were… in my bed. Sleeping together!