Chapter 44
Payson
The house feels different when we walk back into it.
Or maybe I’m the one that feels different.
I drop down onto the couch and pull my legs up, and Duke immediately makes himself at home against my side like he’s decided I belong here.
Ledgar moves through the kitchen, and I watch him without meaning to.
The way he still fills a space like nothing can catch him off guard is infuriating.
It always has been. It’s like he’s not scared of anything.
“You hungry?” he calls. “No.” He comes around the corner and leans against the doorframe with his arms crossed and looks at me.
His eyes roam my body, making heat rush to my core. “Stop that,” I say.
“Stop what.”
“Looking at me like that.”
“Like that.” I give him a look that should tell him to not play games with me, and he has the audacity to smirk. I look back at Duke and scratch behind his ears.
“You should shower,” he says. “I’ll find you something to wear.”
“I have clothes in the car.”
“I’ll get them.”
“I can get my own…” He walks out of the room before I can even finish the sentence.
I sit there on his couch, his dog pressed against my leg and stare at the ceiling, contemplating on the difference between actually forgiving him and wanting to forgive him.
Two very different scenarios but how in a matter of hours he makes it feel like there’s nothing to forgive.
Or how my body still heats at his stare and vibrates with need at his touch.
I hear the front door open and close, then the trunk of my car followed by the front door again.
He comes back in with my bag and sets it at the end of the hallway without a word.
I hate how it’s almost natural being here feels, sort of like we’ve been here before and we both know where things are headed and there’s nothing we can do about it.
“Bathroom’s the second door on the left,” he says.
“I’m sure I can find it.”
“Second door on the left,” he says again.
This time more firmly. I stand up, grab my bag, and head down the hall without looking at him.
The flooring alone should have been my first clue.
Wide hardwood planks that probably cost more per square foot than what I pay in rent.
Art along the walls that isn’t for decoration.
The kind of art you look at for a second and then look at it again because you felt something you weren’t planning to.
I stop at the second door, open it, and just stand there.
My eyes rake across the room and my heart flutters a little more.
Not because it’s breathtaking, but because I designed it.
Or something very similar to it that the difference is splitting hairs I can barely find.
Two years ago, I did a project on a whim, one of those late-night rabbit hole ideas where you pull up a design program and just start building something because your brain won’t shut down for the night and you need somewhere to put it.
I never showed it to anyone or even announced it.
It’s been saved on my laptop ever since, and yet it’s standing in front of me in three dimensions.
Floor to ceiling stone tile that shifts between charcoal and brown depending on where the light hits it.
I specified that exact tile variation. The matte black fixtures I spent forty minutes choosing because every other finish didn’t match right to the design.
The frameless glass shower taking up the far wall with two rainfall heads and a bench built into the corner with the same stone tile running seamlessly from floor to wall.
The soaking tub beneath the large window, positioned exactly how I had it in the design, so that whoever was in it could look out the window.
Warm recessed lights glow with amber instead of white, and a long double vanity runs the length of the opposite wall in the same stone tile.
Two sinks, and two mirrors trimmed in a thin black frame that disappears into the wall if you’re not looking for it.
I stand in the doorway for a long moment before I look back down the hall toward him.
He couldn’t have known. It’s not possible.
I step inside and close the door behind me and stand in the middle of my own design and take it in.
The shower takes all but four seconds to heat up, and I step under it and stand there just trying to make sense of it all.
I think about the way he kissed me, or well I kissed him.
The way he grabbed my neck and held me to him, kissing me like it might be the last. I think about the way my heart felt like it was going to explode when he said, “on my last breath.” I think about this bathroom and what it means that he used my design.
I let the water wash over me until I’m satisfied enough with the answers I give myself.