Page 24 of Marrying Mr. Wentworth (Austen Hunks #3)

I couldn’t sleep.

Not with her this close.

Not with the sound of her breathing—slow, even, maddeningly peaceful—curled around my brain like a memory I hadn’t earned the right to keep.

Ariana Remington was asleep. In my bed. In our bed, technically, if you went by the marriage certificate I was keeping in my other hotel room.

I lay flat on my back, hands crossed over my chest like a man in a coffin, trying not to move. Trying not to feel.

And failing.

Because she was there.

Inches away, her back to me, the edge of the sheet sliding low over her bare shoulder blades. She’d changed into some silky black tank top and sleep shorts situation that had no business looking that good on someone.

She shifted slightly, and the sheet pulled tighter.

I looked away.

I had made a promise.

No touching. No flirting. No bullshit.

But lying next to her now—close enough to reach, close enough to remember every late-night whisper, every morning kiss, every brush of skin against skin—I felt like I was back in time.

Except now I knew how it ended.

I closed my eyes and counted backward from one hundred. It didn’t work.

Instead, I remembered the first time we ever slept in the same bed. Her bedroom. Prom night. I’d snuck in the window at two a.m. I didn’t sleep at all that night. Neither of us did.

God, we were so young. Nervous and stupidly in love.

Both of us still virgins, both of us pretending we weren’t terrified.

But it hadn’t been awkward. Not even a little.

It had been…perfect. Slow and breathless and clumsy in all the right ways.

She’d looked at me like I was her whole damn world, and I remember thinking, This is it .

This is the girl. The only one who’ll ever matter.

I was right. Even back then, I was right.

And somehow, I still managed to lose her.

The memory hollowed me out. Left me raw.

Because lying here now, inches from her, I still felt like that same dumb kid—heart wide open, hoping like hell she’d look at me like that again.

Like I was hers. Like we weren’t buried under years of hurt and silence.

I’d give anything to go back to that night, to that moment, before I screwed it all up.

But time only runs one way. And right now, all I had was this: a sliver of closeness. A breath. A maybe.

I turned my head toward her. “You awake?” I whispered.

Silence. A long pause.

Then, soft as a secret: “Barely.”

I smiled into the dark. “Can’t sleep either.”

“Shocking,” she muttered.

“I keep thinking I should say something.”

“Silence is golden.”

Pause.

More silence.

And then, softer still, she asked, “What would you say if you did say something?”

I swallowed hard.

“That I never forgot what this feels like,” I whispered.

She didn’t respond.

“And I missed it,” I added.

Still no answer.

“I missed you. ”

Finally, her voice again—dry and razor-edged, but quieter than before. “Words don’t fix what you broke, Christopher.”

My phone buzzed on the nightstand. I glanced over.

Liam:

Where the hell are you?

I texted back without thinking:

With Ari.

A second later, three fire emojis popped up.

I rolled my eyes and flipped the phone over, screen down. Not now.

“I know.” I shifted onto my side to face her back. “But I wanted you to know I know. ”

She was still for so long I thought maybe she’d fallen asleep again.

Then—

“You left,” she said, her voice like glass. “And I waited. I waited to hear from you. A call. A message. Something to tell me you made a terrible mistake. But it never came.”

I sat up slightly, guilt crashing over me like a wave. “I thought staying away was the one thing I could do right.”

“It wasn’t,” she said.

We were quiet again. And it killed me.

“Why now?” she asked after a long beat. “Why try now?”

I took a breath.

Because I don’t dream about anyone else. Because the moment I’ve had one too many, your name is the only one I say. Because I still write songs about you and lie to the press when they ask who they’re about.

But all I said was, “Because I finally realized I was wrong. About everything.”

Her voice was barely audible. “That doesn’t make it okay.”

“I know,” I said. “But I’m not asking for okay.”

I reached out— almost —but stopped an inch short.

My hand hovered above the space between us. Warm air. Unspoken words.

“I just want you to know that if there’s any part of you that still wonders if we could ever make it work again…I’m still here.”

She didn’t answer.

But she didn’t move away either.

And for tonight, that was enough.