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“What are you doing up?”
Saff leaned back an inch, closing her eyes for a second as she relaxed into her touch. “Just going over everything again.”
Maddie’s thumb kneaded into the muscles in her shoulder. “You already went over it a hundred times,” she breathed, her voice slowly awakening.
Saff sighed, rubbing a palm into her bleary eyes, as Maddie inched around the chair.
She sat down in her lap, and Saff wrapped one arm carefully around her.
Touching someone else so often was something she was still working to get used to. And craving it was another thing she hadn’t yet gotten used to.
Maddie trailed a hand down from her shoulder onto her chest, then ran it up her neck until her fingers stopped at her jaw. They inched down until her thumb ran over Saff’s bottom lip before finding it with her own.
Saff relaxed into the kiss, her heavy eyes grateful to close, even if just for a moment.
When Maddie finally pulled away, her lips grazed her forehead, leaving a light kiss there.
The corner of Saff’s mouth tilted up as a soothing warmth trickled through her body.
“I don’t like waking up and not knowing where you are,” Maddie mumbled, lips still resting against her forehead.
“Sorry,” Saff breathed.
“I know you’re worried—“
“I’m not worried,” Saff muttered, her eyes falling back to the map she’d now thoroughly memorized.
“Right,” Maddie said, amusement tangled in the word as she dragged her nails up the back of her neck into her hair.
Saff fought the heated shiver that ran down her body as her hand tightened a fraction on Maddie’s hip.
“If you’re not worried,” Maddie mumbled, leaving another gentle kiss against her hairline, “then come back to bed. Try to sleep. At least for a little while.”
Saff hummed. “If you keep touching me like that, neither of us are going to get much sleep.”
Maddie chuckled, leaning her body further into her. “Now I’m definitely gonna try to get you back in bed with me,” she purred, lips grazing the top of her ear.
Saff smirked, the previous adrenaline melting into a very different type of energy.
Then slowly, Maddie pulled her face back, resting her forehead against Saff’s, as her expression softened into a gentle but earnest look.
“It’s going to be okay.”
Saff pressed her lips into a hard line as her eyes flicked back down to the table.
Maddie continued, “But the best thing you can do right now is rest,” she finished, standing as she took her hand. “Come on.”
She glanced down at the table one last time before she stood, letting Maddie lead them back to the bed.
They laid down, Maddie curling into her side beneath the comforter.
“You better not be gone again when I wake up,” Maddie mumbled, the sleepiness in her voice mixed with the teasing lilt it so often held.
Saff turned, placing a gentle kiss on her head. But when Maddie’s breathing deepened with sleep a few minutes later, Saff stared at the ceiling, the anxious adrenaline returning.
***
Saff walked the path through the houses, peering up at the gray morning light that had finally begun blooming through the sky. When she found the one with white columns on the front, her pace slowed as she spotted two figures sitting on the porch steps.