Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
BEAU
I pull the covers back and grab the sweatpants lying on the end of my bed.
My bare feet pad across the carpet to the door, but the hardwood floor of the hallway is cold when I step onto it.
The heat isn’t on yet and the cool air and floor send a shiver up my back and my muscles contract.
I’m about to turn around to find my slippers or a shirt, but Winston lets out another whine, louder this time.
I head into the living room and turn on the overhead light to the dimmest setting.
“Hey, bud,” I whisper as I kneel down next to his crate, hoping not to wake Sierra up. If there’s one thing I’ve definitely learned about her, it’s that she is not a morning person. “What’s going on?”
Winston lets out a bark and paws at the door to his crate.
Shit. Now I’m going to have to let him out or he’s going to start barking, and it’s too early to wake up our neighbors.
I reach for the latch to the crate door, and as soon as it’s unlocked, Winston barrels through and jumps on me.
His paws are on my shoulders, nails digging into my skin, as he licks my face.
I manage to calm him down enough that all four of his paws are on the floor, but he dances around, waving his butt in the air.
It’s more than just his typical tail wagging.
“Guess you have to go to the bathroom, huh?” I say to him.
“That’s what I figured,” Sierra says from behind me. I turn to find her in thick leggings with ski socks pulled over the top, and a thick fleece zipped up to her chin. “I’m taking him out. Sorry he woke you up, you can go back to bed.” Her voice is full of apology, but also frustration.
“I know you don’t really do mornings,” I tell her. “Want me to take him out?”
She sweeps her eyes over me lazily, obviously too tired to pretend she isn’t checking me out. Sierra looking at me like this is the beginning of pretty much all my teenage fantasies. “I’m already dressed,” she says when her eyes land on my face. “And per usual, you aren’t.”
So this is what desire looks like on her. I like it.
“I can get dressed and take him out to go to the bathroom if you want to go back to bed,” I say, then wonder who has taken over my brain because these are not the kinds of favors I do for people.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says, gesturing down at her clothes.
“I’ll take him out. You go back to bed. One of us should get some sleep.
” She heads to the entryway and pulls on all her winter gear.
The minute she pulls the leash off the hook by the door, Winston goes bounding across the floor so quickly he loses his balance and crashes into her feet face-first, then he hops up and dances around anxiously as Sierra tries unsuccessfully to get his leash attached to his collar.
“Here,” I say as I walk over to them, “let me hold him in place for you.” I sink back to my knees and wrap him in both my arms. I dip my head down and use some of the commands we’ve been practicing to get him to stay still for her.
“Okay,” I say, glancing back up to tell her to try again.
But she’s holding her phone out in front of her with a small smile on her face.
“What do you think?” she asks as she turns her phone toward me. “Should we post this on Winston’s social media?”
In the picture, Winston is looking up at her from my bare arms, which I’ll admit look pretty damn cut with the way they’re circled around him like a cage.
My sweats are slung low on my hips and my hair is kind of a bed head mess, but at this angle it doesn’t really matter because it covers most everything but the side of my face and my jawline.
“Okay. And make sure you say that getting him ready to go to the bathroom at five in the morning is a two-person job. No false advertising if he’s going to find his forever home.”
“That’s almost word for word what I was planning on saying. He’s adorable, but he’s a puppy and he’s a handful. Whoever adopts him has to be ready for that.” Then she looks at Winston and says “Stay” as she bends down and clips his leash to his collar.
Her hair swings forward and I inhale the scent of her shampoo or conditioner, marveling at how sweet she smells, like a tropical drink that I can’t quite remember the name of—something with strawberries in it.
I sit back on my heels, wondering when the hell I became the kind of guy that goes around sniffing girls’ hair and filing the scent away for future reference? You DON’T do that, I remind myself.
I think about all the little things I know about her from living together for the last week.
Hates to cook but loves to bake, likes to sleep in, takes her coffee extra light, still hurting from that dickwad of an ex-fiancé, huge heart that always wants to help, likes her job but misses the creative element photography provided, hyper-organized and easily frustrated when things don’t go how she planned .
. . I could keep going through the list of small details I’ve cataloged.
But I don’t because she’s turning and leading Winston out the door. I close and lock it behind them.
I glance at the clock on the wall. Even though I don’t need to leave here to head to the mountain for another couple hours, I’m awake now. So I head to the coffee maker and turn it on, glad that I’m the kind of guy who sets it up at night.
I grab my phone while I wait for the coffee to brew and the heat to kick on, I scroll through my unread texts from last night.
I headed home earlier than my friends would have liked, as evidenced by all their messages calling me a pussy and telling me they hoped I was getting my beauty sleep while they were busy picking up hot chicks.
There are texts from two different girls I met last night, each of them highly suggestive.
On any other weekend, in any other town, I’d have gone home with one of those girls.
We’d have had a good time for a night or maybe two, and then I’d have moved on to the next girl in the next ski town.
Instead, I came home early, hoping to spend a little time with Sierra when she got back from dinner with her friends.
But she was already home and in her bedroom with the door shut, so I didn’t even see her.
The idea of calling up one of those girls from the bar and inviting them over did cross my mind for .
02 seconds before I realized that I didn’t even want to.
The only person I really wanted to see was on the other side of that bedroom door. I’d gone to my own room for the night, both sexually frustrated and pissed off that I seemed to be having all these confusing emotions.
By the time the coffee maker is beeping to let me know it’s done brewing, Sierra is already walking back through that door. And she looks like she’s about to cry.
“What’s wrong?” My voice is filled with concern—again, who the fuck am I?
“I forgot a baggie and so now I have to go back out and clean up his poop. And it’s like negative five degrees out there right now.”
“Here,” I say, reaching down and grabbing a bag from the roll we keep on the small table in the entryway.
I hand it to her and say, “I’ll get his feet wiped off while you run back down and take care of this.
Just think, if it’s really that cold out, it’ll already be frozen, so it’ll be easier to pick up. ”
She rolls her eyes. “Picking up poop was not what I envisioned when I agreed to foster him.”
She hands me the leash and heads back out the door. I have Winston’s feet wiped off and am sitting on one of the chairs in the living room with my cup of coffee in my hand and him curled up at my feet when she returns.
“Well, aren’t you the picture of domesticity,” she says after she takes her coat, hat, mittens, and boots off.
I can’t help but bark out a laugh. “Yeah, you’ve really nailed the essence of me.”
She gives me a wry smile in return. “You’re not going back to sleep, I take it?”
“No, once I’m up, I’m generally up for the day, no matter how early it is.”
She comes into the living room, takes a deep breath, inhaling the scent of the coffee. “That smells so good, but I feel like if I don’t go back to sleep, I probably won’t be able to stay awake for my date tonight.”
“Oh? You have a date tonight?” My voice is teasing, which covers up the pang of jealousy that shoots through me. I can’t remember the last time I was jealous like this. I’ve set my life up just how I like it, with no time or energy for jealousy or regrets.
“Yeah. That guy who was with me last weekend when you moved in. He’s . . . sweet, I think.”
“You sound really excited about him,” I say and take a drink of my coffee.
“I don’t really know him, so it’s hard to be too excited. I’m only going out with him because my friends insist that I’ll get over Peter quicker if I see other people.”
“You don’t seem like you’re hung up on your ex,” I say.
“No, I’m just angry.”
“You have every right to be angry, and anyone who wants you to move on so you let go of that anger isn’t looking out for your best interest.”
“Petra and Lauren don’t want me to move on so that I’m less angry,” she says through a yawn, “they just think I need to . . . how did Petra put it? Get properly fucked—” her brown eyes widen.
“And I’m so tired that my filter has malfunctioned and I’ve said too much.
Going back to bed now,” she says, her words tumbling out quickly as she stands and takes a few steps backward.
She trips over a basket of blankets, but rights herself quickly, spins around, and rushes toward her bedroom.
I try not to laugh, but I can’t help it. The look on her face when she said she needed to get properly fucked was priceless. Now my imagination is going crazy and I need to get these images out of my head.