Chapter 15
Chapter fifteen
Liv
Is there any need for a hangover? Alcohol is always a good idea at the time, but a cruel mistress.
Something is buzzing near my head, and I need it to stop immediately.
But even reaching my arm up feels like hell.
Then a rush of air surrounds me, but it’s not cold, it’s warm and harbors a scent that I’m becoming all too familiar with.
One of my eyes creaks open like a rusted door hinge, accurate for how I’m feeling. “Jay?” I croak, voice sandpaper, praying he’s not witnessing the state of me right now.
“Morning, Liv,” he replies, voice deep and way too soothing for someone whose face I can’t quite focus on yet. If he read me my monster books in that tone, I’d probably agree to marry him on the spot.
I blink again, slowly adjusting to the light. “Why do you sound like a sexy audiobook narrator?”
Jay purrs a laugh that ripples slowly over my skin. “I see last night hasn’t deterred you at all from flirting with me.”
Flopping an arm over my face to cover my impending shame, I ask, “Tell me I didn’t embarrass myself last night?” A pause. Too long. Dangerously long. I lift my arm, peering at him. “Jay.”
He’s perched on the coffee table, mug in hand, clearly enjoying this. “You don’t remember?”
Dread hits me before the memory does. Then—oh god. A flash. His face. My voice. That word. It all comes back to me in a wash of horror and kaleidoscope of cringe.
“Wait… noooooooo—”
“Ohhhhh yes.”
I groan, sinking back into the covers. “Please say it was ironic. Please say I said it ironically.”
“My favorite part was when you were moaning, ‘yes, Daddy,’” he muses, sipping his coffee far too smugly.
“Stop,” I whimper, clutching a pillow to my face, hoping I’ll disappear into the fluffiness. “I’m going to beg campus housing to let me have that apartment early.”
Jay laughs, it’s more air than sound but still devastating to my insides because that’s the first laugh I think I’ve earned from him, and it just had to be over this, didn’t it. “Relax. No one’s judging. You were drunk. Very drunk. Possibly poisoned.”
“Honestly, I’d prefer poisoning. Less mortifying.” God, I’m every cliché he probably thinks I am.
When I pluck up the courage to peek out from behind the pillow, the grin on his face is so wide, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him smile so big… at my expense, though. I throw said pillow at him. He catches it with one hand, effortlessly. “Stop enjoying this.”
“I’m not. I swear.” He lifts the mug in a toast. “I’m just flattered. It’s not every day a woman screams ‘Daddy’ at me and wants me to be their fake husband all within a month. I’m so lucky you’re my roommate,” he sighs, but it’s laced with amusement.
“I hate you.”
“I know.” He sets the pillow back at my feet, passing me a bottle of water. “Hydrate for me, though, before you kill me.”
I reach for it with the dramatic flourish of someone whose soul has left their body. “If you tell Daphne, I will smother you in your sleep.”
Jay’s silence is deafening. “That might be difficult.”
I freeze. “You didn’t.”
“She was on speaker this morning.”
“Jay.”
He shrugs like it’s out of his hands now. “She was howling. Hudson had to mute the call.”
I let my head fall back against the armrest with a thud, not caring about a concussion. Jesus just take me now. I’d rather camp outside the pearly gates than endure my own secondhand embarrassment.
He takes a slow sip of his coffee again, eyes still gleaming. “I was going to make you eggs, but maybe I should just let you wallow.”
“You’re enjoying this way too much.”
“I’m enjoying you squirming.”
I look at him, groggy and mildly dying, but I can’t help the smile tugging at the edge of my mouth. “I can’t handle this.”
He sets his mug down on the table and leans in just slightly, voice smug. “Rest up, Olivia. Daddy’s gonna make you some eggs.”
I throw the second pillow, and he’s still laughing when it hits him square in the chest.
“Kill me, just kill me.”
***
I don’t remember falling asleep.
One second, I was face down on the couch, groaning into a throw pillow while Jay clattered around the kitchen like a breakfast wizard. The next, I was eating eggs, and now, I’m blinking blearily at the ceiling, the vague scent of coffee still hanging in the air.
My stomach is full. My limbs are heavy. My dignity is in shambles.
Ah. So I’m alive. Unfortunately.
I stretch slowly, one arm flopping off the edge of the couch, and let out a groan that sounds like it belongs to someone coming back from the brink of death.
Jay’s nowhere in sight, but a mostly empty plate sits on the coffee table, my fork still stabbed into a lone piece of scrambled egg.
The empty bottle of water has been replaced with a fresh one, and there’s a blanket over my legs—his blanket that smells like rain and flowers, but manly ones.
I have no idea how that’s possible, but it is.
Which means…
He fed me. Hydrated me. Tucked me in.
I am simultaneously touched and infuriated by how gentle he is with me, considering.
Because now I like him. I mean, I already liked him.
I’ve always liked him—he’s hot, smart, organized, and kind.
But now he’s being sweet and infuriatingly decent, and it’s really screwing with my ability to understand that not all men are like this.
Most men, in fact, are not at all. I’m being tricked into a dopamine haze, post-breakup and vulnerable, where one warm comment or sweet gesture has me spiraling into maybe I could date again?
territory. But Jay can’t be the reason for that spiral. He’s the exception.
And I cannot be out here mistaking the exception for the rule.
I throw an arm over my face again and whisper, “This is why I get myself into stupid situations.”
“Talking to yourself?”
I yelp, jerking upright and nearly launching the fork across the room when it hits my foot. He’s in the doorway to the bathroom, hair damp, wearing joggers and a fresh T-shirt, dark glasses artfully perched on his nose, with steam curling behind him like a paid actor.
“You scared me!” I clutch the blanket tighter like it’s a shield from both shame and temptation.
He smirks. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt your recovery nap.”
I groan and sink back into the cushions, his scent still surrounding me. “Please. Let me die in peace.”
Jay strolls over and drops to the other end of the sofa bed. “No dying allowed. You’ve got an assignment due, haven’t you? Your whiteboard told me so. I have to say, you tell me I’m the organized one, but you have your academic year planned out in 3D.”
I ignore that comment. “I might skip the whole semester. Fake my death. Start over in Canada.”
He watches me with that maddening mix of amusement and quiet patience. “You feeling better?”
I nod reluctantly. “Because of the eggs. Which is also why I now owe you my soul.”
“You don’t owe me anything, Liv.”
That simple sentence gets me. The truth in his words hits me deeper than I let him see.
There’s no tease or value in what he gave me, other than his wanting to do it to make me feel better.
Even now, a small voice in the back of my head whispers that kindness like this is temporary, that I don’t deserve it, that joy this easy is for other people.
But that’s just the heaviness from last night talking. I know that.
I force a smile anyway, swallowing the ache before it shows, and implore my previous statement to the front of my mind. He’s the exception, not the rule.
I shift, trying to break the sudden weight in my chest. “Well. My soul’s kind of a mess anyway. Not sure you’d want it.”
Jay shrugs like it’s nothing. “Guess I’ll just have to settle for your undying gratitude, then.” He grabs the remote, nestling next to me, flipping through a few options before landing on The Avengers.
I blink at the screen, surprised. “You want to watch this?”
He tosses me a lazy smile. “You said you liked Black Widow, right? Thought we should revisit the dynamic.”
“The dynamic between us, you mean?”
“I want to understand my role better.”
I grin at that, because it’s easy to feel at ease around him, despite my heart rate picking up pace. “You make a decent Hawkeye. You have that whole quiet, broody, acts of service thing going for you.”
“I’ll take that.”
We fall into a stretch of silence as the movie starts. Outside, the light shifts midway through the movie. It’s gradual at first, but halfway through the scene where Loki shows up and steals the Tesseract, I notice the shadows moving differently across the room.
Jay notices it too. “Is it getting darker?”
I glance toward the window. Thick grey clouds are rolling in fast, swallowing the daylight in heavy layers. Wind rattles one of the frames, and then the first low rumble of thunder rolls through the air, and electrocutes every single hair on my skin.
Jay leans forward, muting the TV for a second. “Was that—?”
“Thunder,” I breathe, already sitting up straighter, a wild energy beating in my chest.
Another rumble follows, closer this time. And then the sky opens.