Pursuit of Happiness | Taz Skylar [1]

066. through the night

On her first morning in Tenerife, Zoe woke to the warmth of the sun on her face. It was bright enough that it pierced at her eyes uncomfortably through her eyelids and she made a noise of complaint in the back of her throat, rolling over to lie on her stomach and burying her face into the pillow. The familiar laugh that sounded from across the room made Zoe lift her head again, looking over to see Taz come in from the balcony that connected to their hotel room, wearing only a black pair of shorts that hung low on his hips.

"You're up early," Zoe mumbled, her smile soft as she watched Taz pull the sliding door that led out to the balcony shut behind him.

"I'm not up early, you just woke up late," Taz told her, placing his phone down on the beside table once he reached the bed, before sitting down on the edge of the bed, facing her.

"You should have woken me up," Zoe said, sitting up and then stretching her arms above her head until a joint in her back popped.

"You slept through the night for once. I wanted to let you sleep," Taz replied, resting his hand on her knee as she dropped her hands back into her lap. When Zoe stared at him as if he'd suddenly grown a second head, Taz asked, "What? Why are you looking at me like that?"

"You just said that I slept through the night."

"Well, you did."

"I haven't slept through the night in years," Zoe said.

Taz nodded, but he was otherwise quiet on the matter. Zoe had always been a light sleeper, but it hadn't escaped his notice that it appeared to have gotten worse at some point in the past five years. Taz had lost count of the number of times that he'd been woken up in the early hours of the morning by Zoe tossing and turning in the bed next to him as she struggled to get back to sleep. He'd experienced it enough times to know the difference between it being a nightmare that forced her awake or some unseen force she couldn't seem to put her finger on.

"Maybe I should replace my mattress when we get back. Maybe that's the problem," Zoe said, pushing her legs free from the blankets so that she could crawl across the bed and into Taz's lap, draping her arms across the back of his neck.

Taz didn't think that Zoe's mattress was the problem, but he didn't say anything about it. Instead, he slipped his hands underneath the shirt that she'd taken from his suitcase the night before to rest on her hips and let her draw him into a kiss.

"What do you want to do today?" Taz asked when Zoe drew back, her fingers brushing over the tiny hairs at the back of his neck.

"You," Zoe hummed, the curl of her mouth reminding Taz of the way that she looked at him when they were tangled together in bed and she teased him until he thought he was going to combust.

"Later," Taz promised, rubbing his thumb back and forth across her hip. Leaning up, he pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth and said, "But we can do whatever else you want to do with the day."