It was a little true. He’d drawn out some ideas, and his sketchbook was still sitting on his desk where he’d left it, waiting for him to get more done.
He’d actually taken a break to sketch out an idea he’d had for Lauren’s Secret Santa present. Once he’d learned she had him, he’d made it his mission to figure out who had her, and offer to trade. It was explicitly against the rules of Secret Santa that he himself laid out every year, but he wanted an excuse to give her something. Turned out, Marcus had drawn her name and was only too relieved not to worry about finding the right gift for someone he didn’t know that well. Asa had shoved the romance novels he’d already bought for Sonia in Marcus’ hands, ignoring the dubious expression on the dude’s face and just clapping him on the shoulder in thanks.
Can I see?
He jerked up to a sitting position. She wanted to check it out now? In his room? He didn’t know if it was because he’d sat up so abruptly, or because all the blood was rushing to the lower half of his body, but suddenly he felt light-headed. His desk was a mess of papers, colored pencil shavings, open reference books, and he did his best to straighten it up, flipping the sketchbook back to the Cold World drawings.
Sure, he texted back, and kicked a dirty T-shirt under his bed. At least his room was mostly neat.
Her soft knock came only a minute later, and he sat back in his desk chair, trying to look like he’d been there the whole time. “Come in.”
She glanced around, taking in everything from the artwork on the walls to the bookshelf in the corner to his rumpled dark teal bedspread, his laptop and earbuds still discarded on his bed where he’d left them.
“Elliot got me that,” he said when her gaze landed on a cactus-shaped lamp on his dresser. “From a trip to New Mexico with their boyfriend at the time. It stopped working about a month later—just longer than the relationship, actually—but I still like it, so.”
He was rambling. Why would Lauren give a fuck about a lamp?
“It’s nice,” she said. She came up to the desk, so close he could reach out and pull her onto his lap if he wanted. Which, obviously, he wouldn’t do. She touched the sketchbook page, tapping an illustration of swirling snowflakes he’d made in one corner.
“I should’ve known you were an artist,” she said. “Your handwriting alone.”
He forced himself to swallow the usual protest—that he wasn’t really an artist. He’d never gone to school for it, never made money from it. He barely showed anyone the stuff he worked on. But if that was how Lauren saw him, he wasn’t about to disabuse her of the notion.
“I’m thinking what Cold World needs is a total revamp of the Snow Globe,” he said. “Not just to include a snow effect from the ceiling—not in the whole place, just in one corner—but also more color and visual interest. We need to make it more selfie-worthy. Social media–worthy. A place where families go to take their Christmas card photos and couples go to get engaged and influencers go to . . . whatever they do. Tell people to come visit Orlando. We’re never going to have Cinderella’s Castle, but we need something that feels iconic. Where you see a flash of a picture in a brochure and think, oh, that’s the place with the snow!”
He took a breath, trying to gauge her reaction from her profile. Her lashes lowered as she turned the page to reveal more drawings, then flicked up to the paintings on his wall.
“You did those,” she said.
They were from a while ago, when his style had been a little looser, more abstract. But they shared a sense of color in common—Asa liked vibrant, saturated hues in his art.
“Yeah.”
“You did the one in the living room,” she said. “The boy on the stairs.”
“That one, too.”
She glanced back down at the sketchbook, running her fingers over the glossy imprint of a colored-pencil penguin wearing a blue-and-white-striped scarf. “These are amazing,” she said. “I can see a whole mural of this kind of thing in the Snow Globe, and then you could design magnets, tote bags . . . all kinds of merch featuring the same art. That might bring more people in and move product in the gift shop all in one go. It’s brilliant.”
“Well,” Asa said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Except that I’ve never painted a mural in my life. It’s a lot different, doodling a few things in a sketchbook.”
She started flipping more pages, and he reached out to grasp her wrist, stopping her mid-action.
“Sorry,” he said. “Some of the rest are, uh . . .”
For you. He thought of the idea he’d had for her Christmas present, the general sketches he’d done already. Of you. He thought of a loose pencil sketch of her profile he’d worked on idly weeks ago, back when they’d been called into Dolores’ office and Lauren had said having falling snow in the Snow Globe would be magical. He drew people all the time. If she went through the whole sketchbook, she’d see pictures he’d done of his housemates, of random customers at a local coffee shop, of celebrities. But the one of her had been different, and he worried she’d know it right away just by looking at it.
“Pornographic?” she asked, and he almost choked.
“Private.”
“Ah,” she said, flushing a little. “Right. Sorry.”
He still hadn’t released her wrist. Her pulse jumped beneath his fingertips. “You really think I’d put all my pornographic drawings in the same notebook as that little penguin guy? There’s gotta be a separation of church and state.”
“So in this scenario, pornography is . . . church? Or state?”
“Okay,” he said. “Bad example.”
He stroked his thumb along the back of her hand, half because he wanted to and half to see if she’d pull away. When she didn’t, he cleared his throat. “Lauren . . .”
Clearly, they were on a similar wavelength, because she cut him off before he could get another word out. “About last night,” she said. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”
He didn’t know what she’d meant to say, but he could tell from the way she clenched her eyes shut for a moment that it hadn’t been that. He didn’t even bother trying to hide the grin that cracked over his face. “Same here.”
“I think some of that is because it feels . . . unfinished.”
He drew his brows together in mock confusion. “I thought you finished?”
She rolled her eyes, smacking him playfully on the arm. “You know what I mean,” she said. “Unless you don’t, in which case welcome to the most embarrassing moment of my life.”
Truthfully, Asa wasn’t completely sure he did understand where Lauren was going with all this. But he didn’t want to say the wrong thing and spook her. He caught her by the hips to draw her closer, until she was standing between his knees.
“If you’re asking if I’d like to do it again,” he said. “The answer is emphatically yes.”
She pushed at his shoulders, her fingers digging into his T-shirt. “Not like we have to do exactly the same stuff . . .”
“Oh, we can change it up,” he said, sliding his hands around the warm, bare skin of her waist under her shirt. “Like this time I’d really, really like to see you naked.”
He pressed his lips to the hollow of her throat, tugging gently at the collar of her shirt with his teeth.
“Um,” she said. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to undo your buttons with my mouth,” he said. “It’s a very sexy move if you’d stop ruining the moment and let me do it.”
She threaded her hands in his hair, pulling slightly so his head tilted back to look up at her. “You’re going to ruin my shirt. Or choke on a button.”
“Well, I see which one of those you prioritized.” He smiled, realizing he was also perfectly happy just doing this. Teasing Lauren, making her laugh, enjoying the rare privilege it felt like just to be able to touch her.