6. Bella
Chapter 6
Bella
M y phone rings while I’m throwing on my favorite hoodie.
When I see that it’s Lance calling, I answer it while darting to the front door and slipping on my sneakers.
“Hey, are you here? My buzzer’s broken, so I’ll come down to let you in,” I say as I walk out the door and into the hallway.
“Bad news.” He sighs. “I’m sorry, Bella, but I can’t come today.”
I stop walking and am about to ask what happened, but then I hear him make a retching noise. I wince. “Are you sick?”
More retching. After a few seconds, he coughs and clears his throat.
“Yeah. We ordered pizza from that dive bar down the street from our place last night. Awful idea.”
“You didn’t. Lance, even from the outside, that place looks disgusting.”
He makes a gagging noise .
“Is Lauren sick too?”
“No, she’s fine. She’s still in the phase of her pregnancy where anything with cheese makes her nauseous.”
“Okay, well, that’s good.”
“I’m sorry, Bella.”
I sigh. “It’s okay. Just get some rest. And drink plenty of water and Gatorade, so you don’t get dehydrated.”
We say goodbye, and I hang up. “Great,” I mutter to myself.
“Everything okay?”
I glance up and see Braden standing a handful of feet away, about to walk into his apartment.
I let out a tired laugh. “Fantastic.”
He raises an eyebrow. “You don’t seem fantastic.”
I tug at the messy bun on top of my head. “A friend was supposed to help me move around some furniture in my bedroom, but he got sick.”
“Oh. That sucks.”
“Yeah.” I shuffle my feet as an awkward silence stretches between us.
“I could help you,” he says.
I look at him. “You sure you’re allowed to do that?”
He frowns like he’s confused. “What do you mean?”
“You’re a professional hockey player. Don’t you have a clause in your contract that prevents you from doing stuff that could injure yourself?”
He flashes a sexy smile. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”
My tummy flips. Well. That was unexpectedly hot.
“What do you need help moving?” he asks.
“Two headboards and a big dresser,” I say.
“That should be fine.”
I think about it for a second. I’m so sick of sleeping against that clunky old headboard. If I wait for Lance to feel better to help me, it’ll be at least a few days.
My impatience wins out. “You sure it’s okay?”
Braden smiles. “Yeah.”
I walk inside my apartment, and he follows behind me. He toes off his shoes, and I close the door.
“Nice place.” He gazes around the space.
“Thanks. It’s my aunt’s. She’s letting me stay here.”
I leave out the reason why. No need to give the hot hockey goalie my pathetic breakup story.
He follows me into the master bedroom. I point at the heavy wooded headboard. “I want to switch out that wooden headboard for that new upholstered one I ordered.” It’s leaning against the far wall. I tell him I already loosened the old headboard from the bedframe.
“It’s too heavy for me to move by myself,” I say.
“Yeah, no problem. Where do you want to put the old headboard? In the closet?” He nods toward the door to the walk-in closet on the other side of the room.
I shake my head. “No, the closet’s not wide enough. I was thinking we could move the dresser farther down the wall and set the wooden headboard next to it.”
He nods once. “Got it.”
He steps over to one side of the headboard and bends down to grab it. I walk over to the other side of the bed to grab the other end of the headboard, but he moves it on his own.
I stare at him as he lifts the massive piece of wood effortlessly in his hands. I shouldn’t be so surprised. He’s almost a foot taller than me, which means he’s probably about six-three. And he’s built like a fucking unit.
When he lifts the headboard, his biceps bulge. Wow …
A second later, his t-shirt rides up, and I catch a glimpse of his ripped stomach.
A hard swallow moves down my throat. I blink and look away.
Am I seriously getting this hot and bothered watching a guy I barely know move furniture?
It’s been more than six months since you last had sex, so yeah.
“You sure you’ve got it?” I ask, my voice pitchy.
“Yeah, I’m good.”
He sets the wooden headboard against the end of the bed so it’s out of the way, then grabs the upholstered headboard.
I start to offer to help him move it, but he shakes his head. “It’s okay, I can do it.”
He slides it between the wall and the bed. When he bends down to snap the headboard into the bedframe, I get a view of his sculpted ass…
My eyes go wide, and I bite my lip. The second he stands back up, I pretend to fuss with something on the old headboard.
“I think it’s good to go,” Braden says.
“Great,” I hold back a wince at how squeaky my voice is. “Thanks for, um, doing all the heavy lifting by yourself.”
I notice he’s not even breathing hard. When I unloaded the upholstered headboard and assembled it, I broke a sweat just dragging it across the room.
The corner of his mouth hooks up in a ridiculously handsome half-smile. “It wasn’t bad at all.”
He walks over to the solid walnut double dresser. He pats the top of it. “I might need your help with this one.”
“Yeah, of course.” I walk over to grip one side while he takes the other. “Let’s move it down this wall, as close to the corner as we can get it.”
He nods.
“One, two, thr?—”
He jerks the dresser forward before I even get to “three,” throwing me off balance. I fall forward into the dresser. The impact pushes open the top three drawers, and a bunch of my clothes tumble out.
I push myself back up. “What the hell, why did you start moving before I even got to three?”
He frowns. “That’s how you’re supposed to count when you move something. One, two, then move on three.”
I shake my head, annoyed. “No. It’s one, two, three, then move.”
Braden glances off to the side at something on the floor. His eyes go wide.
I look over and see a pile of my socks and underwear…and almost every sex toy I own.
For a second, I just stand there, frozen with embarrassment.
Braden gawks at the half-dozen vibrators, dildos, and butt plugs littered on the floor between us. His cheeks redden, and a hard swallow moves down his throat.
I open my mouth to say something, anything, but all that comes out is a choking noise. My brain is fried from embarrassment.
After a second, he looks up at me with wide eyes. Like I’m a total freak.
I fall to the floor and scramble to pick everything up. Except I’m so thrown off that I keep dropping stuff. I pick up my vibrator and drop it. I try to pick up a dildo and drop it. I try to pick up my other vibrator and end up dropping that too .
“Do you want me to, uh, help you?” Braden asks.
“No!”
I shake out my hands and finally scoop up all the toys. I dump them into the nearest open drawer and slam it shut.
“Um, you forgot, uh…”
I look up and see Braden gawking at something on the floor a few feet away.
When I see the shiny silver butt plug lying in the middle of the carpet, embarrassment morphs into full-on humiliation.
This cannot be happening right now.
I reach over, grab it, and toss it into another random drawer.
I stand up. “Sorry about that,” I say quickly as I study the floor. I can’t bear to look at him right now.
He clears his throat. “It’s okay.”
I don’t miss the hitch in his voice. This is definitely not okay. My neighbor, who I don’t even like, saw my entire sex toy collection. He probably thinks I’m a psycho. Or a sexual deviant.
I close my eyes and attempt to breathe through the top-level humiliation that’s roasting me from the inside out. It feels like my entire body is engulfed in flames.
“Bella, it’s okay,” he says after an awkward silence. “It’s totally fine to have…toys. Perfectly natural. And, um, healthy.”
I tug my hands through my hair, pulling hard against my scalp. Jesus. I’d give anything to disappear into thin air right about now.
When I finally muster the courage to look at him, he’s standing with his shoulders hunched and his hands shoved in the pockets of his joggers. His gaze darts from me to the floor to the far wall. God, he’s so uncomfortable .
He looks back at me and clears his throat. “Good for you for, uh, having all that…stuff.”
My head falls back as I groan. I am going to die of mortification. “Stop. Talking.” I muster what little dignity I have left and look Braden in the eye. “I don’t ever want to talk about this again, okay?”
He nods quickly.
“This never happened. Understand?”
He keeps nodding, then bolts out of the room. A few seconds later, I hear the door to my apartment gently close.
I fall face-first onto my bed and scream into my pillows. I’d give anything to have the floor open up and swallow me whole. Because I have no idea how the hell I’m ever going to look Braden in the eye ever again after what just happened.