41. Paige
41
Paige
A re you still awake?” I whisper to Rhodes from beside him in bed.
We came back after dinner and barely made it out of our clothes and into pajamas before falling into bed with exhaustion. It’s still so crazy to me that he’s lying on a pillow beside mine. Maybe that’s why I can’t sleep…
“Mhm,” he mumbles.
He wasn’t awake.
But I can’t stop thinking about the dinner and need to talk to someone. Cleo abandoned her place by my head for the small chair in the corner of the room. I hope it isn’t because Rhodes is in the bed with me now and solely based on the shag blanket draped over it.
“Do you remember what Wyatt said?” I ask him, staring at the ceiling with my hands clasped over my stomach. “What do you think my skills are?”
The sheets rustle as he turns to face me, sliding a hand over my stomach. “You’re funny, brilliant, beautiful…”
“I mean actual skills,” I say. “Ones that can help me pay the electricity bill and buy a loaf of bread and milk at the same time if I want.”
“Wild woman,” he coos. “Bread and milk?” I start to push his hand off me, but he holds it in place. “Okay, okay, I’ll stop. Just let me hold you.”
Instead of just his hand, he scoots his entire body closer to me, tugging my hip until my side is flush against him.
“I thought you didn’t like to snuggle,” I state, recalling our time in the experiment when he mentioned that.
“I never said that,” he retorts. “I said I like to cuddle, but I also like my space. Plus, it’s different. I’m not just cuddling anyone. It’s you. You’re like my…fated bond or my mate. Something like that.”
The way he says this is revolutionary to my brain and makes my heart come awake like it’s had twelve shots of coffee. I turn to face him and kiss the mouth that just said this to me. My hands wander up his chest, lightly pushing at his shoulder to pin him to the mattress so I can straddle him.
Instead, he grabs my wrist before I can sling my leg over him. “As much as I want this, as I’m sure you can tell with my instant hard-on, I’m not going to let you.”
The dark room make it hard to see anything, let alone his expression, as I look down at what I believe is his face. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I’m not going to let you use sex to distract you from how you’re really feeling.” He stretches behind him to the bedside table and pulls the hanging chain for the lamp, casting the entire room in too much light. He adjusts his pillow, keeping a hand on my hip. “Now tell me again, what’s really bothering you?”
I sigh and face him, tucking a hand between my face and the pillow. “I went on this whole journey, had experiences that left me feeling empowered and good, but I still don’t know what I’m going to do about my career. Where am I supposed to start? What do I do? What do I want to do?”
He listens, waiting for me to continue.
“I’m glad we’re finally together; that isn’t the issue. I just wish I had figured this part out a little more. The trip is almost over and…”
When I pause, he whispers: “Tell me.”
“And I still have The Itch. It’s not as intense, but it’s there.”
“The Itch?” he questions.
I suppose I haven’t told him about it.
I take a breath. “The Itch is this sudden and intense need inside me for change. I can’t describe it better than this, but basically, when I start to feel it, I want to upend something. I want to change jobs, get a new haircut, or travel in a van to Yellowstone.”
“You’ve done all of those things in a matter of weeks,” he points out.
“Yes, exactly! And The Itch just keeps reminding me I still don’t have a plan for what’s next. I know you said we’d figure it out, but what if I can’t? I don’t want to start a new relationship only for you to have to support me.”
“I would, though,” he says, eyes earnestly seeking something in mine. “I would support you financially, emotionally, physically, mentally…whatever you need, Paige. If you need more time to think about what you want to do, take it. Move in with me and think about it for however long you need.”
“Move in?”
A smirk plays on his mouth. “I was going to wait until we got home to mention it, but yeah, I want to live with you. I want to see and be with you every day. I always have.”
Tears spring to my eyes, but I don’t swipe them away because they’re evidence of just how much he makes me feel. How much he makes me want him. “Rhodes,” I whisper.
“If you don’t want to leave your parent’s house, I’ll move in with you—them.”
A tear streaks down my cheek, but he doesn’t swipe it away either, he just tracks it with his eyes as it absorbs into my pillow. “You’d do that?”
He exhales, eyes closing momentarily. “Of course, I would. God, Paige, there really isn’t much I wouldn’t do for you.”
I know this because I’ve witnessed it for years. Rhodes has always been a constant in my life, there for me when I need or when I’m frantically entering another relationship because it’s what I convinced myself I needed to feel settled. It didn’t help, but Rhodes does. He’s this anchor that isn’t stifling but still holds me steady. It feels more freeing to be with him than apart.
He really believes in me.
And it makes me want to believe in myself.
“Would you live in the van with me?” I ask. Maybe it’s a test, or maybe it’s because it has been a thought that’s crossed my mind.
His answer is immediate. “Yes. But we’d need a bigger bed.”
I laugh and wipe at my wet cheeks. “Vincent VanGo doesn’t exactly have the longest bed for all of your legs.”
His voice deepens. “It’s not just for my legs.”
The hair on the back of my neck rises. “Oh?”
“It’s to lay you out in every possible way,” he says. “I love and respect you, Paige, but that doesn’t mean I’m always a saint.”
I bite my lip and use my foot to stroke up his calf. His breath hitches as I bend my knee and loop it over his thigh, getting closer until our noses are touching. The hand he had on my hip is now flattened against my back.
“I would live in a van for you,” he whispers. “I would run a marathon—”
“You love running,” I cut in.
“Okay, maybe that doesn’t work then.” He smirks. “I’d let you redecorate my entire apartment.”
“That’s better,” I say with a laugh.
He presses us closer as if this were possible. “I would have run to Yellowstone to find you. I would go anywhere, see anyone, and dress in any themed Halloween costume you wanted.”
I stroke the course stubble along his jaw, sinking my hand into his hair and loving the way he closes his eyes at my touch as if it’s so good for him. “Despicable Me?”
“I’ll be Gru.”
“I make a better minion anyway,” I say with a laugh.
He laughs, too, then locks eyes with me. “Take the pressure off yourself from always feeling like you have to have things figured out. You don’t have to know where you’re jumping next. That’s one of the best parts about you, Paige. You aren’t static in your passions. You have many and can fit in lots of different types of roles. But there’s no rush.”
I nod, then lean in to kiss him. But this time, I let our mouths explore, spark with love that turns into lust and takes over my senses in the best way as our tongues tease one another. His hands gently move me to my back and find new tracks along my skin that scatter my willpower.
That is, until I remember something. “My journal!” I push out of his arms in a rush, not even giving him a chance to get a good grip on me before sliding out of his embrace and bouncing around the room. “Where is it?”
He groans. “Tomorrow? Can we find it then?”
Not spying what I need after spinning in circles a few times, I slip my feet into my shoes and rush down the hallway to the front door, grabbing my keys for Vincent. He’s parked right outside, so it only takes a moment to unlock the door to get the journal that Rhodes gave me. I’m back inside in what I believe is less than a minute if I were being timed, my heavy footfall pounding on the floors as I make my way back to the room.
I hold it up like it’s a fish I just caught.
Rhodes is on his back, arms braced behind his head. “Your journal?”
I nod and crawl across the bed toward him. Sitting on my heels with the journal firmly gripped in both hands, I stare between the words I wrote to him and him . “For this entire trip, which really has only been a little over a week, I’ve written every word in this journal. For you and me. The random things I thought of, the weird mind trails, and the things I didn’t know my heart needed to say. I wrote them all for you.” I extend the journal with both hands toward him. “And as promised, I want you to read them.”
He pulls his hands from behind his head, grabbing the journal with both hands in reverence. “The thing I didn’t tell you was that I wrote letters to you, too.”
My brows pull down as he reaches under the comforter and pulls out a journal to hand to me. It’s leatherbound, like mine, with a ribbon holding its place somewhere in the middle of the book. “You wrote this much in a week?”
He exhales and pushes to his elbow. “I needed something to distract my mind when I wasn’t playing pickleball. Instead of calling or telling you everything, I wrote it down.”
I sink off my heels to sit beside him in bed, opening to the first page and running a hand over the inscription at the top:
Dear Paige.