The laugh came easier then.
It was funny how a guy who’d known me for so little time managed to put me at ease in a way that my parents, friends, and a string of therapists never had.
“Thank you,” I murmured. I returned my cheek to his chest but tilted my face up toward his. “For this . . . for today and yesterday. I don’t know what I would have done if you weren’t here. I know you probably had somewhere better to be—”
“Trust me. This was much better than the alternative. I’m exactly where I want to be.” He glanced down at me and gave me a half-smile.
I walked my fingers over his stomach and asked, “And what was the alternative?”
“Spending time with someone better left in my past. I prefer moving forward.”
For the first time, moving forward felt like a possibility.
We stayed there in a sanctuary of our own making, at ease without speaking. We’d done all the talking we needed, and slowly I drifted off to sleep with Golden Boy beside me in bed.
17
Cade
A bright light flashed on the other side of my closed eyelids. Groggily, I went to rub my eyes, but something had my left arm pinned to the bed.
A woman stood over me with a camera in her hand. Black spots flooded my vision, and it took me a few moments before I remembered where I was and what I was doing here. The woman with the camera was Mrs. Miller, and she’d just taken a picture of Max sound asleep on my arm. There was a little wet spot on my sweater from her drool.
God, I wanted a copy of that picture.
Mrs. Miller held a finger to her lips and whispered, “I’m sorry. The two of you just looked so sweet that I couldn’t resist.” This was officially the weirdest day of my existence. “Dinner is ready. Mick and I will wait for you two to get freshened up.”
She tiptoed out of the room and closed the door on her way out.
Time to wake the sleeping dragon.
In sleep, Max looked younger, softer. She had long eyelashes that rested against her cheeks. Her nose was small and turned up slightly at the end. Even sleeping, she had the sexiest lips I had ever seen. Full and slightly puckered, it was like they were calling to me. And I couldn’t stop thinking about her saying she wasn’t sorry I kissed her.
Not that it mattered. She was taken.
I was doomed to always be attracted to the girls I couldn’t have.
Plus, what she’d told me earlier . . . it couldn’t have been easy. I could tell how raw the memories left her, and the last thing I wanted was to take advantage of that tenderness.
I was about to nudge her awake when her eyes opened, and she caught me staring at her. She blinked a few times and then her eyes narrowed on me. She sat up and slid to the complete opposite side of the bed.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
Whatever closeness we’d gained earlier didn’t appear to have carried over through her nap. The walls were back up and I was still on the outside.
“I swear it’s not as creepy as it looks.”
“Said the serial killer to the police.”
Her hair was messy and closer to how it usually was.
I said, “I was about to wake you up. Your mother just said dinner is ready.”
“My mother was in here?”
I was coming to enjoy that wide-eyed exasperated look she got every time something concerned her mother.
“She might have taken a picture of us.”
She grabbed a pillow, and I narrowly blocked a swipe to the face.
“You let her take a picture of us?”
I grabbed the pillow when she went in for a second swing, and used it to pull her closer. “I didn’t let her. I woke up to the flash.”
“Seriously?” She made a noise that was part groan/part growl and buried her face in her hands. “Kill me now.”
I kept the pillow between us as a buffer and said, “It’s almost over.”
“You’ve not been to one of my mother’s Thanksgiving dinners. It’s only just beginning.”
She slid off the bed and went to the bathroom to splash her face with water. I followed and did the same. It was frighteningly domestic as we both tried to maneuver around the small space without bumping into each other. I was struck by the oddity that I had known this woman just over twenty-four hours. And twenty-four hours from now, we would likely go our separate ways, never to hear from each other again.
I swallowed, and she looked at me from the bathroom door.
“Well, are you coming?”
“Yeah, right behind you.”
We were ambushed with another photo attack as soon as we entered the living room.
“Mom! Seriously?”
Mrs. Miller’s eyes reminded me of those commercials about abused pets—designed to make you feel bad. “I’m sorry. Cade mentioned earlier that you were okay with pictures, and I—”
“Oh did he now?”