The gray light of morning is competing with the dim yellow glow of Dawson’s lamp when I wake up. Consciousness returns slowly and by increments. At first I don’t know where I am, and I fall back into a shallow dream, but the next time I surface I remember—the car going into the ditch, the horrendous storm, Dawson at the passenger-side window.

My cheeks go hot. There was more, too. The dinner he’d prepared. The fucking—it wasn’t making love, it was wild, passionate fucking.

And Dawson, stretched out beside me, his arms over his head, abs completely on display.

I resist the urge to run my fingers over them and instead reach for the lamp, clicking it off. My eyes are instantly relieved, and I drop back on the pillow and look around the room. It’s early—five, if the alarm clock on the bedside table is right—and I yawn, the sheets soft against my skin.

My heart twists in my chest when I think of what happened last night. Jesus, it was so good—so good. Nobody I’ve been with since high school has ever compared to Dawson, and now I know they never will. Only there’s a fluttering in my gut that makes my face flush even hotter.

It’s not like after one night of mind-blowing sex, we can just pick up where we left off. Not least because where we left off was a pretty shitty place, and I don’t think either one of us wants to revisit that.

Images from last night flicker through my mind, even though I close my eyes and try to rest. Dawson’s smooth, regular breathing is a soothing sound, but after a few minutes my heart starts to pound.

What are my choices now?

We can shake hands and part ways and never talk about this again, or we can actually talk about what happened then and what’s happened now, even if it’s like a knife in my heart. Dawson clearly has some feelings about it, and I can’t say I’ll be shocked if—even after all this—he wants nothing to do with me. It’s not like he asked me to drive my car into the ditch outside his house. And it’s not like he’s ever reached out to me, even once, in the last ten years.

I can’t fault him for taking advantage of a situation like this. I wanted the same thing.

My mind spins in a hundred different directions. What do you want now? I can’t take him back to my parents’ house with me and declare that he’s the one after all these years.

Well—yes, I can.

I just don’t know if I want to face the disappointed looks on Christmas Eve.

But I’m getting way the hell ahead of myself. What does Dawson want? Probably not to go back and face the people who convinced his daughter he was a worthless piece of shit who didn’t deserve five minutes of her time.

I wander in and out of this kind of circular bullshit for another forty-five minutes, and then I can’t take it anymore. I put my legs carefully over the side of the bed, listening for any change in Dawson’s breathing. I don’t want to wake him up if I don’t have to.

I’m halfway through the door when he rustles under the comforter, but he just turns over onto his side, not waking up.

I pad out into the living room. One wall is taken up with a floor-to-ceiling bookcase—God, all of my books would look fantastic here—and in the filtered light through the picture window I stop to see what he’s got.

It’s a motley collection of books. I recognize some dog-eared copies from way back in high school. When I spot the photo album, I can’t stop myself.

I listen hard for him, but in the silence I pull it down from the shelf and crack it open, the plastic pages separating with a tiny snap.

And there we are.

It’s the first picture in the album, all alone on its own page. My arms are around his waist. It looks like it was taken in the spring, somewhere outside, and by one of those crappy disposable cameras. It’s slightly off center, but I’m grinning at the camera like it’s the best day of my life.

Dawson is looking down at me, his face illuminated with a broad grin. Back then, there was no hardness in his expression. Sure, he was a bad boy who had a foul mouth and stayed out all night doing God knows what, but it was all in fun.

The expression on Dawson’s face in the picture makes my heart ache.

I flip through a few more pages. There are some pictures of Dawson and his friends flipping off the camera, a few awkward snapshots of what looks like a high school dance, Dawson’s sister Cassie—but no other girls, no one except me.

At the very back of the book is a picture I’ve never seen before. In it, I’m sitting in the grass several feet away from whoever took the picture—Dawson, I imagine, looking down at one of my favorite books, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The sun is shining from behind me, reflecting off my hair, and I look absolutely at peace.

I haven’t felt like that in years.

Not since last night, when I fell asleep with Dawson’s arm curled around me.

I put the album back and make my way to the guest bathroom. There’s an unopened toothbrush and toothpaste in the cupboard where the towels are, and after I brush, I turn on the shower, strip off my clothes, and step in, images of Dawson filling my head.