Chapter 7
Seven
My own death doesn’t frighten me but yours? Oh, that’s my deepest fear.
—Weaver’s secret thoughts
Weaver
The snoring woman on my couch would’ve sounded cute had she not followed that snore up with a moan.
Now she was just making me hard.
I could imagine those little moaning sounds coming from her mouth when I…
The snoring woke her up, and she gasped and sat up, looking around in a blind panic.
“What…who…where am I?”
I answered, even though I knew she was just saying it to say it, not to get answers.
She thought she was alone.
But she wasn’t.
“You’re at my place,” I said quietly.
She whirled around, and another moan escaped her, this one from the quick movement.
“Oww,” she groaned. “What the heck?”
“Hangover,” I told her. “You and your sister got drunk as skunks. You at least had enough of a sound mind to ask me for a ride home when the bar closed. Only, when you got in my truck, you passed out.”
“What about my sister?” she asked, pressing her forehead to the leather beneath her.
“Dropped her off at her hotel with a chaperone so she didn’t choke on her own puke.”
“Was she puking?” Those light-brown eyes met mine, though she still hadn’t lifted her head from the couch.
“I don’t think she’ll want the answer to that.”
Eddy groaned. “Please, for the love of all that’s holy, tell me you didn’t let Boone tag along?”
“I hate to break it to you, but Boone wasn’t any better off than the two of you were. I went to drop your sister off at her hotel, and Boone got out with her.”
“Fuuuuck.” Eddy started rocking her face along the cushion. “She’s going to kill me.”
“Why?” I asked.
Eddy pushed herself up onto her forearm before saying, “Because when there’s a bed in the vicinity of the two of them, they have sex.
Then they’ll both moan how it was a mistake and fight like cats and dogs.
It’s a repeating cycle every time the two of them are in town at the same time. ” She groaned.
“Thought you said they were toxic together.”
“They are.” She widened her eyes at me. “And we dropped them off without protection on top of that.”
“They’re adults, Eddy…” I held her stare.
“They’re adults, yes,” she confirmed. “But the two of them have zero self-control, even less self-awareness, and absolutely no boundaries when it comes to each other. They also have a hundred percent no-condom rate each time they get together. Which is a terrible idea.”
I laughed. “Kind of sounds exciting.”
“If you think living on the edge of death is exciting…” She fully sat up. “Whoa.”
“Headache?” I asked as I turned to the cabinets and got a glass down before filling it with water.
She watched me move around the kitchen as I hunted for ibuprofen and Tylenol.
“Ache is too mild of a word,” she admitted. “More like an ice pick to my brain.”
Eddy
“Why’d you drink so much?” he asked.
I thought about that question for a long moment before I said, “My sister’s a miserable drunk. It’s more fun to drink with her than have to listen to her sober.”
He burst out laughing, and my god, was it the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
Today, Weaver was dressed in a pair of gray sweatpants, a tight white t-shirt that left even less to the imagination than the gray sweatpants, and white socks.
He looked super comfortable.
And sexy.
I wanted to steal every article of clothing he was wearing and take them home. Never give them back.
Honestly, the man was devastatingly attractive in anything he wore, but right then, with his head thrown back laughing his ass off, he was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
This had to be what it was like when angels sang.
The laughter was over all too soon, but the mirth still shone in his eyes as he gestured to the bathroom with his chin. “Bathroom is right through there. I put some clothes out for you. They were a…friend’s.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “I appreciate the offer, but I’d rather smell like stale beer and peanuts than wear some other woman’s clothes.”
He studied me for a long moment before shrugging, not bothering to deny that the clothes were in fact from one of his conquests.
Why did that hurt so much, knowing that he’d saved some other woman’s clothes?
I barely even knew the man…
“Suit yourself.” He paused in the mouth of the kitchen. “I have some sweatpants and a sweatshirt in there on top of the laundry basket. They’re not dirty or anything, but I try not to wear the same thing two days in a row. You can wear that.”
I refused to allow myself to feel giddy at the thought of wearing Weaver’s old clothes.
They probably smelled divine…
I shuffled to the bathroom and closed the door, at first not looking at the place around me because my eyes were barely open past slits.
Only after I used the facilities, washed my hands, and then looked at myself in the mirror did I see the decadence that I was standing in.
“Whoa.” I blinked as I stared at the marble countertops, brass fittings, and…
“You have a chandelier in your bathroom?” I couldn’t stop myself from calling out.
There was a pause in the movement outside the bathroom I was currently standing in, and then, “Long story.”
“I’ll bet,” I said as I eyed the shower.
After a few long seconds of contemplation, I decided that it would be better not to smell like peanuts and beer for however long I was going to be at Weaver’s place.
I turned the shower on hot and gasped when not one, not two, but six showerheads turned on.
“Wow,” I said as I stared at it. “This feels like I’m in an alternate reality.”
Was this how the rich half lived?
I wouldn’t know.
I’d gotten hand-me-downs from the church since I was a baby. I barely remembered a single instance where I’d gotten a new anything besides a soccer uniform. And even that was donated by the church.
Now, with my own adult money, I tended to want to pay my car payment and my mortgage.
Though Nettie was a professional soccer player, that didn’t give her much more than I made a year.
So we were definitely not in “six showerhead” territory.
I stepped under the spray after stripping out of my clothes and groaned.
“Marry me!” I called out.
The door creaked open and then, “Can I grab your clothes?”
I looked up through the nine inches of unfrosted glass and said, “Sure. Are you going to wash them?”
“Planned on it,” he said. “Any special instructions?”
“Use extra detergent.” I shrugged. “I don’t subscribe to that follow the laundry instruction life. I throw my fitted sheets in with my delicates.”
“And I’ll bet you can’t find them afterward,” he said as he stepped into the room.
“I find them…eventually. Usually in the middle of the night when I find a lump underneath my sheet. I’ve fished many ’o socks out that way.”
“You’re funny,” he said as he bent down and grabbed my clothes. “Do you want girl smelling shampoo?”
I felt my belly drop out. “Uh, I don’t want to sound ungrateful…but why do you have women’s clothing and stuff here? Did you bring me home without asking your girlfriend?”
There was a moment of silence and then, “Spent a few weeks talking with Audrey Stanley—Audrey Owala to you—and she left a bunch of stuff at my place. I was just trying to get to know her. I slowed it down after seeing how far she was taking it. She was over here once with a few other people and brought in a box of her things. She even distributed some of her things to the master bathroom and bedroom while I wasn’t paying attention.
She hasn’t asked for any of her stuff back yet. ”
I dropped the washcloth and all but threw open the glass doors. “You’re joking, right?”
He slowly allowed his gaze to follow the line of suds that were sluicing down the length of my body.
I didn’t have the capacity to be embarrassed right then.
“About what?”
“Audrey!” I cried out. “You’re joking. It’s anyone else, right?”
He frowned and brought his gaze back up to mine. “No.”
I groaned and placed both of my hands over my face, which only caused shampoo to get into my eyes.
I cried out as I turned toward the spray, hastily rubbing my face as I rambled.
“Weaver! I swear to God, if that woman murders me in my sleep, it’s going to be all your fault!” I cried out. “We’re going to lose state next year because of you!”
There was a moment of disbelieving silence before he said, “I’m sorry, but how did you get that far out of the realm of possibility?”
I turned back to him, my hair whipping the glass doors before I pushed most of my upper body out of the shower stall and toward him.
“Because she hates me! Absolutely loathes. I have spent hours hiding from her at school! I spent more time in my locker my freshman year than I did outside of it. All because of her. And now you’re telling me that you’re in a relationship with her? ”
“Not quite,” he corrected me. “I’m not seeing her seriously.”
I picked up a pink loofah and threw it at him. “Then explain this!”
“That’s mine,” he said as he caught it, water drenching the front of him. “All of her shit is in the master bath.”
That only made this worse.
“Fuck.” I closed the door and turned my back to him, hastily pumping out way too much masculine three-in-one body wash, shampoo and conditioner product before working it into my hair.
“My life is ruined. More ruined! I didn’t think it could get much worse after finding my parents…
but then you tell me this. I swear to God, I cannot win! ”
He started to back out of the room, but I pointed at my clothes. “Leave those. I’ll put them back on.”
He continued to back away.
“I said leave them!”
He left the room and closed the door, leaving me to my own horrific thoughts.
The shower took me longer than it should have—hello, six showerheads, people!—and I got out still majorly freaking out.
I didn’t bother to do anything to my hair—I refused to ever use anything of Audrey’s, no matter how much my hair was about to get tangled—and stomped out of the room in a towel.
I made it to the couch where I searched high and low for my phone.
“You have my phone?”