Chapter One: Close Enough to Ache
She dreams about him again.
Not anything graphic—her mind doesn’t need details to betray her. It’s the feeling that does it. His voice low and unhurried, the way he says her name like he has time. Like he’s already decided she’s his favorite part of the day.
She wakes up tense, sheets twisted around her legs, jaw tight with frustration.
“Ridiculous,” she mutters to the ceiling.
He’s a coworker.
He lives thirty… maybe sixty minutes away depending on traffic.
And she is absolutely not driving that far just because her body won’t behave.
Still—
She checks her phone.
A message from him waits there, sent late the night before.
You disappeared. Fall asleep on me?
Her stomach flips. That word—on—does things to her it shouldn’t.
She types, deletes.
Types again.
Maybe. You talk too smoothly.
Three dots appear almost immediately.
That sounds like an invitation.
Her pulse kicks up. She leans back against the headboard, biting her lip, staring at his name like it might jump out of the screen and touch her.
Don’t get ahead of yourself, she replies.
You’re too far away for trouble.
There’s a pause this time. Longer. Deliberate.
Distance doesn’t stop thoughts, he sends.
Just actions.
That’s what gets her.
Not pressure.
Not teasing too hard.
Restraint.
She exhales slowly, heat pooling low, familiar and maddening. He’s right—and he knows it. Her mind has crossed that distance a hundred times already. Late nights. Long showers. Dreams she refuses to unpack.
I think about you, she types before she can stop herself.
Her thumb hovers.
Heart pounding.
Then his reply lands.
I know.
Two words. Calm. Certain.
She squeezes her eyes shut, fighting the urge to grab her keys, to just go, to stop pretending this tension isn’t eating her alive.
I want you, she adds. Honest this time. No joke. No armor.
Another pause. Longer still.
She almost hopes he won’t answer.
But he does.
If I were closer, he says,
we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Her breath catches. That’s not a promise.
It’s worse.
It’s control.
She sets the phone face-down on the bed, chest rising fast, body buzzing with need and nowhere to put it. Thirty miles never felt so impossible—or so thin.
And for the first time, she wonders if the distance isn’t what’s stopping them.
It’s the moment when restraint finally breaks.
