A shirt hits my face. “Put that on,” he says quietly.
“You’re so bossy,” I grumble. But I still drag off my shirt that’s wet at the hip and throw it somewhere in a corner of the room before I pull on the new shirt. It’s as soft as I love my shirts to be, but surprisingly loose. I get a whiff of his scent and smile to myself. He gave me one of his shirts.
Christopher crawls onto the bed, pointedly on top of all the sheets, like he’s going to “try to be a gentleman” again, as if he didn’t just dry hump and finger me into orgasmic oblivion against a bathroom door. Then again, even with my wardrobe change, I’m still a mess of grass stains and paint and sweat, so maybe he’s just protecting himself from that.
Then again, he’s covered in all that stuff, too.
So why the distance?
Gently, he tugs the sheet up to my chin, then drifts his fingers across my forehead, down my temple, across the bridge of my nose. “Time to settle that busy brain of yours, Katydid. Go to sleep.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” I mutter, feeling my eyelids give in to the temptation to slip shut. “Besides. I’m not”—a yawn rudely interrupts me—“tired.”
“Of course you’re not. You’re not exhausted,” he says, his fingers slipping through my hair along my scalp until they bump into my messy bun. “Your eyes aren’t sleepy. Your limbs aren’t heavy.”
Another yawn. “Nuh-uh.”
I hear the smile in his voice as his knuckles tenderly graze my cheek. “And you definitely won’t have sweet dreams.”
I wish I could say his reverse psychology doesn’t work. But my eyes drift shut. My limbs are heavy.
And I dream the sweetest, filthiest dreams.
? TWENTY-SIX ?
Christopher
I wake up groggy, my body heavy and loose with the unfamiliar pleasure of feeling rested. Blinking, I stare up at the ceiling and smile as I remember Kate cuddling with me in her sleep, her head on my shoulder, her arm across my stomach, her leg over mine.
Watching her sleep, listening to each steady breath, holding her, feeling her hold me, I could have stayed there forever.
My smile falls.
Because now I remember where I am.
I’m not with Kate in her bed. I’m in my bed, which I stumbled into after I slipped out from her arms and dry swallowed my abortive med as a migraine scraped across my brain and sunk in its teeth.
It comes back to me in patchy flashes of memory. Battling waves of nausea on the train ride back as my pain level skyrocketed. Collapsing onto my bed. Covering my head with my ice cap and a pillow as agony pulsed through my brain, until mercifully the med kicked in, and I slept.
But Kate doesn’t know any of that. All she knows is I touched her and kissed her and put her to bed, then left. I tried to write her a note before I left, but my hand was shaking so badly from the pain, I couldn’t write. By the time I got on the train, I couldn’t stand to look at my phone’s bright screen and text her. I told myself I’d message her as soon as I woke up. I’d only sleep a few hours, like I always do, before nature’s call or more pain woke me up.
And of fucking course, the one time I counted on only a few hours of sleep, I slept straight through the day.
Goddammit. The thought of her waking up to an empty bed makes my chest ache.
Reaching for my nightstand, I feel around clumsily for my phone, then spin it toward me. I turn up the screen brightness so I can see it, now that the light won’t hurt my eyes.
I want so badly for the time to reassure me that this darkness is a sign of early morning, that the rare surge of rested energy coursing through me is a fluke, but I know it’s not. It’s the deep velvet darkness of an autumn evening, and I couldn’t possibly feel this good after only a few hours of sleep.
“Fuck,” I groan as my phone screen reveals the time: 5:45 PM.
And then I see the email notification, its sender and subject. My heart starts to pound.
I tap on the notification and open the email, eyes scanning the text, dread knotting my stomach:
Dear Mr. Petruchio,
Please see the attached link to your team’s headshots. This link is private and accessible only to employees of Verona Capital. Both color as well as black and white high resolution files are available for download, per our agreement. If you or your employees notice anything minor that you’d like edited in any photo, please note that Photoshop enables me to erase zits and stray hairs, but it does not make me God or a plastic surgeon—there are limits to what can be done.
Regards,
Kate Wilmot
Oh God. This is bad. Not only did she Mr. Petruchio me, she used Regards, the corporate email equivalent of a big old “up yours.”
She’s angry.
She’s hurt, a quiet, wise voice inside me says.
I can’t honestly imagine what Kate thinks, waking up to me gone after what we did last night. She’s probably drawn the worst possible conclusion, and to be fair, I’ve never done anything to make her think I’m more than an unapologetic one-and-done seducer. To her, I got what I wanted, and then I left.
“Shit.” I kick away the blankets and stand from my bed, scrubbing my face. I have to find Kate and explain myself. I have to make this right.
“Shower,” I tell myself, getting a whiff of how ripe I am. “Shower first, then . . .”
Meow.
I glance toward my doorway, where the Wilmots’ cat, Puck, slinks across the threshold, deceptively smooth for such an old, cantankerous animal.
“Puck. You can’t keep doing this, man, escaping and sneaking over here. It stresses them out when they can’t find you.”
Meow, he says, stretching lazily, then sauntering toward the foot of my bed and jumping up.
“I know you like my treats better, but that’s no excuse for sneaking out. We have our scheduled visits when I bring you home and you get to enjoy them. I always bring some to Sunday dinner, too . . .” My eyes widen. Relief whooshes through me.
Sunday dinner. Today is Sunday. And Sunday dinner starts fifteen minutes from now. Kate will be there. Jamie said she’s come to every Sunday dinner that I’ve missed, trying to keep my space while she was here. I start frantically stripping off my clothes, tripping over them on my way to the shower.
This is one Sunday dinner I’m not going to miss.
? TWENTY-SEVEN ?
Kate
Hopping down the main stairs of my parents’ house, I pass the coffin-sized storage bins labeled christmas in the hallway and spin into the kitchen, where Dad stands stirring something that smells so mouthwateringly good, it makes my stomach growl.
Which reminds me that I haven’t eaten all day. I spent it lost in editing photos and sending Christopher a terse professional email, trying not to think about how empty my bed felt when I woke up, even though I told myself not to hope he would be there in the morning, even though I told myself not to expect another generous pastry or gorgeous flower delivery, another one of his little scribbly notes, anything indicating that what we did meant to him anything close to what it meant to me.
Foolish, foolish Kate.
“Katie-bird,” Dad says, opening an arm to me.
I slip inside the crook of his arm. “Hey, Daddy. What’s for dinner?”
“Creamy potato with facon bits. No animals were harmed in the making of this soup.”
I smile and give him a squeeze around the middle that makes him groan. “Sounds perfect, thank you. Where’s Mom?”
Dad adjusts his glasses, which have steamed up over the soup. “On the lookout for Puck. He’s made a jailbreak again.”
“That little master of feline mischief,” I say proudly. “I raised him right.”
Dad chuckles. “He certainly keeps us on our toes.” As he glances my way, my dad’s expression changes. “You weren’t wearing that when you got here, were you?”