Chapter 17
I’ve pictured what Sawyer’s home looks like an embarrassing number of times.
When I imagined him sitting and writing me back, it wasn’t in a house terribly different from this one.
The interior is more spacious than the exterior suggested, extra rooms jutting off from the back that aren’t visible from the street.
The total silence, the encompassing emptiness, makes the space seem larger too.
I follow Sawyer down a narrow hallway, swallowing all the questions I doubt he’d answer.
The house—white walls, worn hardwood floors, small rooms—might be typical to most people not born with the last name Kensington, but I think the quiet would be abnormal to anyone.
When I thought about him writing me, I assumed siblings were barging into his room.
That his mom was cooking dinner and his dad was in the yard, raking leaves.
All those stereotypes I’ve never experienced.
Rory is too principled to invade my privacy.
Mom cooks occasionally, but our private chef manages most meals.
And our penthouse doesn’t have a yard for Dad to maintain, just a private terrace.
Sawyer shoves the door at the end of the hallway open, entering what I’m assuming is his room.
I glance around at the three other doors. Two are closed. One is open, the shadowed outline of a sink and toilet barely visible.
When I walk into his room, Sawyer is yanking the comforter off the mattress.
I drop my bag next to his desk, the thud announcing my presence.
He says nothing though, until I ask, “What are you doing?”
“Changing the sheets.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I say, actually meaning it.
Sleeping on someone else’s sheets would normally bother me. But it doesn’t bother me with Sawyer. We’ve had sex. He knows about Third. Lying on the same fabric he has doesn’t seem so intimate by comparison.
“It’s fine. There’s a clean set in the closet. It won’t take long.” He balls up the linens, heads into the hallway, then returns with a folded set.
“Can I help?”
He glances at me. Smirks, and my stomach pitches like the floor is tilting. “Is this your first time?”
My breath keeps getting caught in my chest, making a regular rhythm impossible. “It can’t be that hard to figure out.”
His grin widens while I hunt for a corner. “It is. Damn. Wonder how many times I can take your virginity, Kensington.”
I pause sorting through the sheets so I can flip him off. “Don’t flatter yourself, Bennett.”
“I don’t have to,” he says, rounding the foot of the bed and coming up behind me. I stiffen as he reaches for the pile on the mattress. “You keep doing it for me.”
I scowl, even though he can’t see my expression, watching him quickly find a corner. Our housekeeper, Martha, changes the sheets once a week. I make my bed every morning—I’m not that spoiled—but I’m guessing Sawyer will laugh if I say so. And he probably should.
“Once you finish the fitted sheet, the pillowcases go on.” Sawyer narrates his actions, visibly entertained by himself, while I watch with my arms crossed. “Last, the top sheet. Pull it up here, tuck here and here, and then you fold the ends like this.” He demonstrates.
It’s a more complex process than I would have assumed, almost like origami.
“Can’t you, you know, just do this?” I make a shoving motion with my hands.
“Sure, if you want them to fall out.” He nods toward the other corner. “You do that one.”
At no point in my life did I ever think I’d be spending my senior prom night—historically when I planned I’d have sex for the first time—with the guy I did have sex with for the first time while he taught me how to properly tuck sheets.
I’m going to have to check under the comforter when I get home to see if Martha uses the same fancy folding method.
I’m probably going to check every bed I sleep in from now on and think of Sawyer fucking Bennett every damn time.
My edges aren’t as crisp as his, but the overhanging sheet doesn’t fall back out after I jam it under the mattress, so I consider it a success. “You can sleep on that side,” I say, nodding toward the corner he did. “In case mine falls out.”
Rather than laugh or make fun, Sawyer sobers. “I’ll take the couch,” he tells me.
“Oh.” Sleeping in bed with a guy would normally freak me out. I never have before. But I’m disappointed more than anything. And I feel guilty for putting him out. “You don’t—I’ll take the couch.”
That makes him grin. “You’d last five minutes.”
Most of the time, I enjoy being accommodated. Prioritized. My last name means I get waved to the front of lines. Served first. Told yes when others would get told no.
But I do not like Sawyer seeing me as spoiled and helpless, and I think he might.
“No, that was you,” I say sweetly.
The amusement remains on his face, but it transforms. Smolders, sending a shiver down my spine.
“Wouldn’t your boyfriend mind?”
It takes me several seconds to realize what he’s talking about.
I suppressed that humiliating phone call as deep as possible.
Plus, I feel drugged, even though I left Manhattan totally sober.
I’m drunk on him, on sudden exposure to an addiction that elicits bouts of insanity—like lying about dating someone so I seem less pathetic.
Which is, undoubtedly, way more pathetic.
“I don’t have a boyfriend,” I tell him. “And I”—I hate apologizing, but I owe him this one—“I shouldn’t have called you that night. It was … I’m sorry.”
I almost add that it was a lie. But that would be even more mortifying. Not to mention ruining everything calling him was supposed to accomplish.
I want Sawyer to think I’m over him. That I’m unaffected by being in his room, by the prospect of sleeping in his bed. That this is just another Friday night to me.
“It’s fine.” He heads for the door. “Glad you had fun.”
I scoff, but he’s already in the hallway, so I’m not sure he hears me.
I walk over to his desk, picking up and unzipping the bag I packed for the after-party.
I thought, at some point, I’d regret missing most of the evening I’d planned meticulously, but it still doesn’t hit as I unpack.
I set my toiletry bag on Sawyer’s desk, pulling out both sets of pajamas as I debate which to wear.
I’m not sure if Sawyer is coming back or if he’s taken up residence on the couch.
And I don’t care, I tell myself sternly.
I’ll leave tomorrow morning, spend as little time as possible in the Hamptons all summer, and fly to LA at the end of August.
I settle on the pink silk pair, toss the blue set back, and then reach for my overstuffed toiletry bag.
My hand slows midair, my attention caught on the edge of an envelope holding the top desk drawer open an inch.
I look over my shoulder. No sign of Sawyer in the doorway.
So, I slide the drawer open carefully, heart somersaulting with the realization that he kept my letters. One of them at least.
It’s not until I slide the envelope out and see the neatly typed address that I realize this letter isn’t from me.
My heart stills, but curiosity builds. The letter is from Cornell University.
And it’s open, so I don’t think it’s illegal to read the contents of mail addressed to someone else without their permission. Just extremely unethical.
I’m too intrigued to care. I peer inside and scan the lines of text quickly, aware I could get caught at any second. If I’m going to get busted, I at least want to know what I’m looking at. After his address and a generic greeting, it reads:
Congratulations on your outstanding academic success!
Using information obtained from college testing services, the admissions office at Cornell has identified you as a student who may be an excellent candidate for our institution.
Your strong performance on the SAT demonstrates a high level of academic potential and the kind of intellectual curiosity we look for in prospective students.
We encourage you to consider Cornell as you begin your college search. Our university offers a vibrant academic community and unique opportunities—
I stop reading, stuffing the letter back in its envelope. There are more envelopes under the first one. Hastily, I peek in another. This one begins with:
Dear Sawyer,
My name is Dean Martin and I am the head baseball coach at Vanderbilt University. I am writing to express our interest in—
I glance up, thinking I heard a creak in the hallway, and my gaze snags on a poster attached to the back of the bedroom door. It’s of a player captured mid-pitch.
I flip through a few more envelopes. The return addresses include nearly every school my classmates are expecting their parents to buy their way into.
As carefully as I can, I replace the envelopes where I found them and head into the bathroom with my toiletry bag.
While I run through my ten-step skin-care routine, I speculate.
Why isn’t Sawyer going to college? He never offered any explanation in his letters.
Money must be the reason? I’m not well versed in scholarships or how financial aid works, but I know both exist. College is considered expensive to plenty of people, but they find ways to make it work.
If Sawyer is smart enough to ace a standardized test to the extent that schools with single-digit acceptance rates are recruiting him, he could figure it out. So, why?
Not my problem. And not something I can ask him about without admitting I was snooping.
I finish in the bathroom and return to the bedroom.
Still empty, no sign of Sawyer. I drape my prom dress over the back of his desk chair, casting one last curious look at the drawer where I discovered the college letters, then flip out the lights and climb into bed.
The mattress is comfortable. The sheets aren’t too stiff or too soft, infused with the familiar fragrance of detergent.
There’s a masculine undertone that I can taste in the back of my throat.
A relentless reminder of where I am, coupled with the unfamiliar soundtrack of silence that never exists in bustling Manhattan.
I’m wide awake when the door opens, hinges squeaking softly.
I recognize his outline. His steady breathing. And it’s so much more intimate than remembering someone’s eye color or an outfit they wore.
“I lasted longer than five minutes,” he says, flipping the comforter back and then flopping down beside me.
“If you say so,” I tell him pertly.
Sawyer sighs, but I think I hear a trace of laughter.
It’s weird—good weird—having him in bed with me. Rather than be stifled by the close proximity, I feel secure. His body heat is bleeding into my side of the bed, the warmth relaxing my muscles and making me feel sleepy. I can hear his even exhales rather than the haunting quiet when I was alone.
A small part of me—okay, a large part—is tempted to roll over.
To kiss him and run a hand down his abs and into his boxers and see how he reacts.
To beg him for a final time, one that’s not rushed.
That includes a bed, not a hard wall or a cramped truck or a dusty shelf. To fulfill one part of my prom fantasy.
But I’m not brave enough to set myself up for rejection again.
Or as cavalier as I’m trying to act. I’ll fall a little more if I literally let him in, and I should be clawing my way back to casual.
He doesn’t know my family is spending the summer here, and while our paths are unlikely to cross, they could.
If we see each other, I don’t want it to be weird.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.” He’s tense beside me, awareness thrumming beneath the tucked sheets. It doesn’t feel like my side has fallen out yet, so I must have done something semi-right.
“What branch of the military is your mom in?”
Sawyer relaxes. That’s not a question he was concerned about answering. “Coast Guard.”
“Is that why you ‘like boats’?”
“It probably factored.”
I roll onto my stomach, tucking both hands under my pillow. “Good night, Sawyer.”
“Night, Wren.”
It’s the fastest I’ve ever fallen asleep.