**Chapter 56 — The Beginning of a Long Night**
*I Ended Up Living Next Door to My Ex-Husband*
---
His voice was low and unhurried, and it did something entirely unfair to the air in the room.
The distance between us had narrowed to almost nothing — close enough that I could feel the warmth of his breath, close enough that looking anywhere other than his face required a conscious decision.
I looked anyway.
Blue eyes, deep as open water. The clean line of his nose. And his mouth — the corner of it curved in that particular way that I had, without fully realizing it, spent a considerable amount of time noticing.
My gaze stayed there longer than it should have.
"Rebecca?"
I kissed him.
It was impulsive — the act of someone who has been thirsty for longer than they knew and finally, without thinking, reached for water.
Cedric didn't pull back. If anything, he moved toward me, as though he had been waiting for exactly this and had simply been patient enough not to say so.
When we finally separated, the breath that passed between us was unsteady.
"Cedric..."
I drew back just enough to look at him.
Moonlight had found its way through the gaps in the window and settled across his face in soft lines of silver and shadow. He was, in the most inconvenient possible way, extraordinarily beautiful.
My eyes stung faintly at the sight of him.
"...Rebecca."
He said my name quietly, his hand coming to rest against my face.
"After tonight, you become the only one who can save me or destroy me."
His touch was gentle — careful in a way that made it feel like something precious rather than something taken.
"Even so."
His voice dropped lower.
"I will never regret this moment."
He kissed me again.
And the night, unhurried and complete, unfolded around us.
---
When dawn finally began to pale the edges of the window, Rebecca exhaled — a long, slow breath — and her eyes closed. Cedric watched her face until her breathing steadied and deepened into sleep.
She was still flushed. Her hair was loose across the pillow. Her expression, even in sleep, carried the faint remnant of the smile she'd worn earlier.
He let out a quiet breath of his own, something between relief and wonder, and pressed his lips gently to her cheek.
Rebecca, asleep in his arms.
He didn't know — couldn't be certain — whether it was the imprinting that made her feel like this to him, like something essential he had nearly let slip through his fingers. He'd spent weeks wrestling with that question.
He found, now, that it no longer seemed particularly important.
Whatever the origin, whatever the name for it — the thirst he felt when he looked at her was entirely real. That was enough.
"Thirsty..."
Rebecca mumbled against his shoulder, half-asleep and entirely unaware of saying it.
Cedric smiled.
He reached for the water on the bedside table, tilted it gently, and let her drink — which she did, eyes closed, with the uncomplicated trust of someone who has decided, at a cellular level, that they are safe.
She made a small, satisfied sound and tucked herself closer to him.
He laughed — quietly, so as not to wake her — and kissed her cheeks, first one and then the other, because he was apparently incapable of stopping himself.
The morning light arrived slowly, and fell on both of them with great gentleness.
---
The sunlight hit me like a personal grievance.
I surfaced from sleep in stages — first awareness, then the recognition of a truly spectacular headache, then a full-body malaise that felt like I had been wrung out and put back in the wrong shape.
*This is not a normal hangover. This is a masterpiece of suffering.*
I squinted at the clock. Past noon.
I pushed myself upright, pressing both hands to my throbbing head, and was immediately rewarded with a sharp twinge in my lower back.
"Ow — what on earth—"
I held very still until the pain subsided, then moved more carefully.
*Right. Hours on a low chair cleaning fish. That explains the back.*
As for the rest of me — I took quiet inventory and remembered: the joint work in the workshop, Jacqueline's sudden and emphatic declaration of a welcome banquet, the honey beer that had turned out to be far more potent than it looked, and at some point after that—
Fragments. Cedric's face. His voice, saying my name. Something about making a mess of things.
I looked down at myself.
I was not wearing what I had been wearing last night.
I emerged from the blanket like a person exiting a cold lake — slowly, with the full awareness that I was not going to enjoy what came next.
The maids had been as thoroughly drunk as I was. There was no plausible scenario in which any of them had come to this remote cabin in their condition to change my clothes.
Which meant—
*Cedric.*
I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the wall.
*Cedric changed my clothes.*
A fragment surfaced: *"You've made a complete mess of things..."* — his voice, serious, saying something I couldn't quite retrieve.
I put my face in my hands.
*I've ruined everything.*
At the precise moment when Cedric had finally, unmistakably, developed genuine feelings — when he was acting in ways completely unlike his usual self, reaching for me, confessing things he'd clearly never said to anyone — I had apparently had a catastrophic accident of some kind.
*What did I do?*
I pressed my palms against my eyes and thought hard.
The honey beer. Being carried on his back. The cabin. His face—
*The worst possibility arrived quietly and settled in like it intended to stay.*
I lowered my hands and stared at nothing.
*...Did I throw up on him?*
I ran through every other possibility I could think of.
There wasn't a more plausible one.
"Oh no," I said, to the empty room.
Then I got up and walked outside, because being alone with that thought felt worse than moving.
---
The path behind the cabin was quiet and shaded. I walked slowly, trying without success to force my alcohol-blurred memory into producing something useful.
"I need to remember," I said aloud, in the tone of someone issuing instructions to their own brain. "I need to know what happened so I can at least apologize for the right thing."
My brain declined to cooperate.
*Fine. Work with what you have. Cedric may have been vomited on. My clothes were changed. I should apologize. But for what, specifically?*
I pressed my hands over my face and groaned quietly.
And then, through the trees ahead, I heard my name.
"Rebecca!"
I turned. Cedric was further up the path, scanning in every direction, calling out with an urgency that didn't match the situation as I understood it.
He hadn't seen me yet.
His voice was strained. His face, from this distance, looked drawn.
*He's not annoyed. He's worried.*
An even worse thought arrived: *what if he's not just upset about the vomiting — what if, now that it's morning and he's had time to reconsider, he's furious with himself? What if last night's confession feels like a mistake in daylight?*
The back of my neck prickled.
*I need to say something before he finds me. I need a plan.*
There was a very large bush approximately two steps to my left.
I looked at it.
"Rebecca!"
Too late.
His eyes found me. His entire bearing shifted — from searching to found — and he started toward me at once, his expression tight, sweat at his temple from however long he'd been out here.
"Cedric — ha—" I produced a smile that was doing its best under difficult circumstances.
He stopped in front of me. His brows drew together.
"Where have you been?" His voice was controlled, barely. "Do you know how long I've been looking?"
He closed his eyes and pulled in a slow breath — the particular kind of breath that means someone is choosing not to say the first several things that come to mind.
*He's angry. He's definitely angry.*
"I—" I started.
"Why would you—"
One of his brows twitched upward.
*Yes, definitely angry.*
I looked at his expression — the tight jaw, the eyes that were working very hard to stay level — and made a decision.
His arms began to rise.
*Is he going to—*
"I'm sorry!" The words came out before I could organize them. "Everything — all of it — from beginning to end — I'm sorry! It was a mistake, the whole thing was a mistake, I—"
I ran out of specific things to be sorry for and stopped.
Cedric stood very still.
He looked at me with an expression I couldn't immediately read — somewhere between stunned and something more difficult to name.
After a long moment of silence, his lips parted.
"What happened last night..." His voice was careful. Quiet.
"...was all a mistake?"
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