Asa was sure there were several reasons why that was a bad idea, but at that moment, he couldn’t think of them. She pushed open the door to her bedroom, and he followed her inside, his hands in his pockets as he looked around.
There was more of Lauren in this room. The bed was covered in a lavender comforter, a couple fluffy decorative pillows pushed to one side. He crossed over to her bookshelf, tilting his head slightly to read the spines. Mostly fiction, books that looked like they’d been shortlisted for awards or featured on some culture podcast. But she also had a whole shelf of cozy mysteries with titles about a cat who talked to ghosts or sang for the birds, and he pulled one from its place to flip to read the back.
When he returned the book to its place, he accidentally knocked over a Christmas card that had been propped on the shelf. He picked it up, and couldn’t help but notice that it was signed from MB. He didn’t want to be nosy, but he also did want to know more about Lauren, and something told him this was an important part.
“Miss Bianca, with the telenovelas,” he said. “She was your . . . foster mom?”
“Yeah.”
He turned, trying to gauge her expression. She looked wary, but not necessarily closed off.
“I’d like to hear about it,” he said. “If you wanted to tell me.”
She shrugged. “Are you staying? Either way, I’m really tired. I think I’m going to lie down.”
Before he could respond, she’d already switched off the light and climbed under the covers. There was still a glow coming from the kitchen through the doorway, so he could see the way she watched him as he stood by the bookshelf, trying to keep up with her constant changes in direction.
“I can sleep on the couch,” he said.
“You’re too tall,” she pointed out. “Seriously, I know you’re trying to be a gentleman or whatever, but just take your clothes off and come to bed. It’s not a big deal.”
“Take my—” he choked on a laugh.
“Not all of them,” she said, and even in the dim light he felt like he could see her blush. “But I doubt you want to sleep in a button-up and jeans.”
He really didn’t. If he were at home, he would’ve slept in nothing but his boxer briefs, but now he left his undershirt on as well in a slight concession toward propriety. He slid under the covers next to her, pushing the decorative pillows up against the headboard so he could rest his head on the normal pillow underneath.
She was quiet for so long he thought maybe she really had fallen asleep that fast. But then he heard an intake of breath, like she was about to speak, and eventually her voice, low and husky in the dark.
“I don’t like to talk about it,” she said. “Not because my experiences were all that bad . . . I mean, I know a lot of kids have it so much worse. I was never abused in foster care, or anything like that.”
He folded the pillow under his head, propping himself up so he could face her. “Your experiences are your own,” he said. “They don’t have to be better or worse relative to anyone else’s.”
“I know,” she said. “But somehow . . . never mind. It’ll sound really stupid if I say it out loud.”
“Try me.”
He could practically feel her gathering her courage in the silence that followed. Finally, she took a deep breath and started talking.
“I always thought that people would reject me, if they knew. Like my own mother abandoned me, you know? I don’t know much about my dad—not a name or a job or anything real. So if people knew about that part of my past, they would see how easy it was to abandon me. And then they’d do it, too.”
He reached between them for her hand, giving it a squeeze. “You’re not easy to abandon,” he said. “What happened to you . . . it says more about the adults in your life than it does about you.”
“I know that,” she said. “On some level. Most days, I don’t even blame my mom. She didn’t leave me on purpose. She had a drug problem, and she never got help. I know she loved me, but she couldn’t take care of me. And at the end of the day, I think losing me made her give up. She died of an overdose less than a year later.”
“How old were you?”
“Ten.”
His heart ached for the kid she must’ve been then. He felt like he could see her with her glasses and her books, a quiet kid who tried to pretend that everything was going along fine.
“I do know what you mean,” he said, “about worrying about rejection. I never thought about it that way, but it’s probably one reason I don’t tell just anyone about my parents kicking me out, either.”
She made a face that he couldn’t read in the dark. “I’m sorry if the random number generator game made you tell me anything before you were ready.”
“No,” he said. “I trust you.”
“I trust you, too,” she said, her voice a whisper.
Why did those words hit him in the gut so hard? Maybe it was because he knew how difficult it was to earn Lauren’s trust, what an honor it was to have it.
She made a little snort of laughter, and it was so far from his own contemplative mood that he couldn’t help but smile. “What?”
“This is what I meant, about plans,” she said. “Tonight I was going to show you how fun I could be. I put on my glittery eye makeup and drank that awful punch and danced and it was all supposed to be for you, but instead . . . here we are talking about childhood traumas. The wet blanket strikes again.”
Asa couldn’t deny the possessive surge that went through him, at her confession that she’d made all that effort for him—not for Daniel, not because of any stupid contest or date, but for him. “Lauren,” he said, “I don’t know where you got the idea that you need to be someone different for me, or at all. I happen to like you exactly as you are.”
She wouldn’t know how close he’d come to saying something else, a bigger word than like. But he realized it was true. Somewhere along the way, he’d fallen in love with Lauren Fox. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly when—it was more like a series of moments, going all the way back to the first time she’d ever spoken to him at the holiday party about wanting to cancel Secret Santa. It was hard to remember how he would’ve even described Lauren to himself then. But it was impossible not to imagine each interaction making some deposit, no matter how minuscule, another entry on the ledger of all the reasons he loved her now.
He would have to remember that language, for whenever he got up the courage to tell her how he felt. Something told him she’d like any comparison to spreadsheets.
But not tonight. He gave her hand another squeeze, leaning forward to kiss her forehead.
“I promise you’re the most fun,” he said.
“For a robot.”
“Nah,” he said. “You’re clicking your way through all those traffic lights, baby.”
He’d meant it to come out breezy, a lighthearted callback to the speech she’d made during karaoke that had made her so self-conscious. But the endearment came out sounding tender instead, and when she rolled to her other side, she snuggled into him. He wrapped his arm around her, pulling her closer, and it didn’t take long before they both fell off to sleep.
Chapter
Twenty-One
When Lauren woke up, it took a moment for the night before to come flooding back. It all hit her in a highlight reel of bad decisions, from the karaoke to crying under fake snow to trying to kiss Asa and then asking him to help her take her bra off.
She curled into herself, as if making herself smaller would protect her against the worst of the mortification. But behind her, Asa shifted, his body warm and hard pressed against her.
So the night hadn’t been all bad. She remembered the way Asa had gently cleaned her makeup off for her, the story he’d told about believing in Santa until he was twelve. She remembered the slight rasp in his voice when he’d said I happen to like you exactly as you are. And then she’d fallen asleep with him holding her, and woken up the same way. It was nice. She could get used to the feeling.
His arm was draped loosely over her hip, his bare leg wedged between her knees. He really did give off an insane amount of body heat.