Total pages in book: 49
Estimated words: 47606 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 238(@200wpm)___ 190(@250wpm)___ 159(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 47606 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 238(@200wpm)___ 190(@250wpm)___ 159(@300wpm)
“It’s morning now.”
“Later in the morning, then,” I said, yawning. “I’ll take you to breakfast if you’re good and you go to sleep now.”
“I’m not a child. I’m older than you.”
“Are you? Are you really?” Apparently, it was impossible for me not to be snarky with him at any time of day.
He let out a frustrated huff of air.
“Please go to sleep,” I soothed him. “Kill the light like a good boy and try not to dwell on the mid-century abomination you chose.”
I was almost out the door.
“Abomination? What’d you just say?”
I didn’t stop. “I told you those nightstands were heinous. The lines, the minimalist fixtures, they make me rabid.”
“I hate this.”
That stopped me, and I spun around. “What do you hate?”
“I need to confess something to you.”
“I’m sorry, go ahead.”
He exhaled sharply.
“May I ask something while you’re thinking?”
After a moment, he said, “Yeah.”
“Did you line up someone to go with you to the black-tie event later this evening? Because if you did, you should probably call and confirm with them.”
“Have you noticed you always try and tell me what to do and it never works?”
I cleared my throat. “Have you ever noticed that nine times out of ten, you actually do what I want?”
“No. That’s not true.”
I scoffed. “It is though. You don’t like to be managed, you don’t like to be nagged at, and you really hate—most of all—for anyone to tell you what to do. However, if I suggest something, it gets in your brain, and then a couple of days later I’ll ask you a question, and as long as you’ve forgotten that I was the one to bring it up in the first place and you think you did it on your own, then you’ll do it.”
“No.”
“Yes,” I insisted.
“Name one time,” he dared me.
“I can name ten off the top of my head, but are you awake enough to banter?”
“I hate this.”
“You said that before. What do you hate?”
“This.”
“Arguing at four in the morning? Is that it?”
“Yes,” he muttered.
I smiled at him. “Please go to sleep. I’ll see you in the later morning.” I stopped in the doorway. “Thank you for bringing me home. You’re very good to strays.”
“You’re not a stray,” he grumbled. “You always make it sound like I did you this big favor by having you work for me and taking care of you, but you take really good care of me too.”
I sighed deeply. “That’s possibly the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Would it be scary for you if you came and lay down by me?”
My stomach flipped over, and not in a bad way, but in the good way that I had nearly forgotten. “Nothing about you has ever scared me.”
“Which is interesting, right?”
I thought about it a moment. “It is, yes.”
“Well, nothing you’ve ever done has made me think, huh, he’s strange.”
“What about weird?”
“Not even weird. Ever since you told me all those years ago that I had to make intuitive leaps and think faster, I’ve been doing that.”
He had, that was true. Now he could basically read my expressions.
“It’s not great for learning other people, like what makes them tick. It doesn’t leave room to get to know others because I just want it to work the same.”
“I know what Dr. Butler would say.”
“What would he say?”
“He’d say that codependence is bad, and that you need to have someone else work for you. We should stay friends, but I shouldn’t work for you. It’s too much time spent together.”
“What do you think?”
“It shouldn’t matter what I think, only what you think.”
“That’s crap. Tell me what you think?”
“I think it’s far too early in the morning to be having such a serious conversation. We both need to go to bed.”
“Okay.”
I turned to go.
“Will you come lie down?”
I looked at him over my shoulder. “What are you talking about?”
“I think you want to sleep next to me, and I want to sleep next to you, so let’s do that and see if it’s all right.”
“You’re straight,” I reminded him.
“Which has what to do with what I’m asking?”
I sighed and crossed my arms. “You’re a smart man. You know precisely what it has to do with what you’re asking.”
He was quiet a moment. “I don’t want any other guy to get in my bed with me,” he said softly. “But I don’t want a woman in here either.”
I had to grab hold of the doorframe so I wouldn’t sink to the floor. “That’s new, isn’t it?” I barely got out. My breath kept catching.
“Not that new.”
Oh.
“It’s been like this for a while for me,” he confessed. “But because you were so hurt, I didn’t want to…scare you off.”
“That could never happen,” I promised him. “Not with you.”
He stared at me, searching my face, and I was drawn farther into the room by the warmth in his eyes.