Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
COOPER
“No.” Evan’s voice is firm as she stares me down from the passenger seat.
“Rhodes, I know what you taste like. My dick has been inside you. You’re literally pregnant with my child and you didn’t get that way by us keeping our distance. We can share a damn bed.”
“One hundred percent no. I’m not sharing a bed with you at your parents’ house. I’m sure there’s a guest room I can sleep in. A couch I can sleep on. Somewhere far away from you and all the parts of you that have been inside of me.”
Evan takes a bite of the grilled cheese I brought her for the road and lets out a little happy hum.
She’s been able to eat more over the last week or so, and it’s my favorite thing.
I’ve only ever cooked for myself, and it turns out I’ve been missing out on so much.
The way it feels to feed her, to watch her eat something I made for her, to take care of her in this particular way, means more to me than I ever could have realized.
And also, she looks so fucking cute in leggings and a this is what a feminist looks like sweatshirt, her hair tied up in a bouncy blonde ponytail as she tries to convince me that she can’t sleep in my room.
I want her to be comfortable, so if she wants the guest room, then that’s what she’ll get, but the fight is fun.
I reach behind my seat and grab a cold can of seltzer from the cooler I left on the floor back there, handing it to her. “Give me one good reason why you can’t sleep in my room.”
She pops open the seltzer and takes a long sip. “Because I’ve never met your parents. And we’ve never shared a bed before. It feels weird to share a bed with you for the first time in your parents’ house.”
I chuckle. “Do you think my parents don’t know how babies are made?” I glance pointedly down at her stomach where her sweatshirt hides the tiniest little baby bump. “I think the jig is up, Ev. Or maybe you’re afraid you won’t be able to keep your hands off me.”
She snorts, taking the last bite of her sandwich. “I’m not the one who’s been yanking you into random closets and dark, empty conference rooms at work for the last few weeks.”
I grin at her because yeah, I have done that.
We’ve done a lot of hooking up in random places all over the office.
But the one thing we haven’t done is had actual sex in an actual bed.
I haven’t even been to her apartment again since the first time I was there, and she’s never been to the brownstone.
The thing is, I’m ready for more with her.
I think I may be ready for everything with her.
It has to be her choice, but I’m not above using all the tools at my disposal to tip the balance in my favor. Hence, A Very Wyles Christmas because my family is my best thing, and I think Evan is dying for some real family.
“Listen Rhodes, if you think I won’t take every single opportunity to get my hands on you, you’re out of your mind.
But one of these days, I’m going to do it in a bed where I can spread you out and taste every single inch of you with absolutely nothing between us.
Where I can take all the time I want to and listen to your moans and hear you beg me for more.
Where I can finally sink inside you again and fuck you so well that you’ll never forget the feel of me.
” I glance over at her, thrilled at the pretty pink flush staining her cheeks. “Of us.”
She shifts in her seat, pressing her legs together, and it delights me. “Okay, well that’s definitely not happening at your parents’ house.”
Eyes on the road, I reach over and run a single finger up her thigh, feeling her shiver. “Maybe not, but soon, Ev. Really, really soon.”
She swallows hard and doesn’t have time to answer me before I’m pulling into my parents’ driveway and putting the car in park.
I watch her take in the big brick colonial house where I grew up, standing tall under the darkened sky.
The snow that blankets the ground. The white twinkle lights that line the roof and the porch decked out for the holiday.
The Christmas tree glowing in the window.
I watch the emotion take over her face, and she doesn’t have to speak for me to know what she’s thinking.
This looks like home.
I wonder what home is for her. Whether she’s ever had one. Whether maybe one day, she’ll want to share mine. It’s hard not to get ahead of myself when we’ve already accidentally pole vaulted from nothing at all straight to We’re having a baby.
“It’s really beautiful, Cooper.” Her voice is quiet. Considering.
“It’s my second favorite place.”
She turns to me. “What’s your first favorite place?”
“My brownstone.”
She smiles. “The famous brownstone full of brothers.”
“And sisters now, too.”
The look in her eyes is something like longing. “It’s nice, that you have these two homes you love so much.”
I reach over and take her hand, feeling my stomach swoop when she turns hers over and links it with mine. “You don’t like where you live?”
She shrugs, glancing out at the house again. “It’s an apartment. Just a place to leave my shit and sleep sometimes before I go back to work. I’ve never really thought of it as a home.”
I stroke my thumb over hers, knowing we should get out of the car, but not wanting to move one single muscle while she opens up to me. Gives me this part of herself. “What about where you grew up?”
She laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “I grew up in a townhouse on Beacon Hill that’s more museum than home.
We had furniture we weren’t allowed to sit on and dishes we were never allowed to use.
The only part of that place that felt like a home was Chris’s room.
My mom let him do whatever he wanted with his room, while mine was a showcase of pink and purple perfection.
I hated it so much. I used to sneak into Chris’s room at night to sleep.
We would talk and play catch between the beds with one of the baseballs he had laying around and eat the candy he kept in one of his desk drawers.
I don’t think I slept in my own room more than once or twice for years.
Even after he went away to college, I still treated his room like mine. ”
I get a sudden picture of a much younger Evan, curling up in her brother’s room, looking for a safe place where she could be herself, and my chest aches. “If you could have decorated your own room, what would it have looked like?”
She smiles a little, leaning her head back against the seat.
“I wanted a green wall. One really bright, bold green wall and a big, pink wooden name sign that said Evan, not Evangeline. My parents only ever called me by my full name, and I hated it. I still hate it. I wanted a big bed piled with pillows in every color of the rainbow instead of the girly white iron canopy bed my mom forced on me, and I wanted a cozy reading chair in the corner and a fluffy rug on the floor. I wanted it to be my favorite place. I don’t think I’ve ever had one of those before either. ”
Her eyes go soft and a little sad, and I want to wrap her up and promise to give her a thousand favorite places. A million. Instead, I just squeeze her hand. “I think that sounds like the perfect room.”
For a minute, we look at each other, so many words passing in the silence between us.
Words I don’t think either of us are ready for.
We draw infinitesimally closer together, Evan’s eyes dropping to my lips before her gaze comes back to meet my own.
Her hand tightens around mine, and the car buzzes with electricity.
I’ve never kissed her before when it wasn’t attached to something else.
The night in the conference room. The elevator.
Closets and conference rooms and behind closed office doors.
But right now, I think that if I don’t get my lips on hers, I might actually die.
We move closer and closer still, and the warmth of her seeps into me. Her breath ghosts over my face, her eyes never moving from mine. We stay there, suspended in this moment together, the tension delicious.
Until a banging on the window has Evan jerking back, tearing her hand away like it burned her.
“Shit,” I mutter, taking a deep breath, trying to get myself together.
“Kiss the girl on your own time, Coop.” My mom’s voice is muffled by the window, but I don’t have to turn around to see the amusement I know is all over her face.
“Oh my god,” Evan mumbles, inching even farther away from me. “Your mom just caught us almost doing…whatever that was.”
I sit up and flash her a grin because she may be acting embarrassed, but I was here ninety seconds ago when she was about to let me kiss her right in this car, and that makes me unreasonably happy.
“That was me about to kiss the shit out of you. And don’t worry about my mom.
She’s seen way worse from my brothers, and I promise she’s thrilled about it. ”
My mom yanks open the car door, smiling broadly at us as cold air gusts in. “It does thrill me, but I’m the type to get cranky when I’m hungry, and we’ve been waiting for you for midnight breakfast.”
“Midnight breakfast?” Evan asks.
My mom grins through the open car door, her eyes warm and full of mischief behind her red-framed glasses.
“A little Wyles family tradition to welcome you into the fold.” Standing up, she strides around the car and opens Evan’s door, pulling her up and out, straight into a hug.
She whispers something I can’t hear in Evan’s ear, and Evan’s eyes gloss over with a sheen of tears, her breath hitching before she closes her eyes and nods.
When they pull apart, my mom links an arm through Evan’s and gives me a sly grin. “Evan and I have a whole bunch of girl talk to do. Make yourself useful and get the bags, Coop, since heaven knows you won’t be cooking. We’ll be inside. You can set the table when you get there.”
My mom leads Evan to the house, and before they go inside, Evan glances over her shoulder with a smile and a little shrug.
As I watch them disappear through the front door, gratitude for my mom’s habitual easy acceptance of the people who are important to us and for the fact that Evan is here with me tangle together until my emotions threaten to boil over.
“Hey, asshole, you going to just let us do all the work? Get the fuck in here.” I snort out a laugh at Jordan’s greeting, yelled through the open front door.
Noah’s head pops up behind Jordan, and he scowls at me. “I know you can’t cook, but the least you can do is come in and set the table. You know how mom gets about Christmas tables, and she’s ramped up to an eleven because you brought a girl.”
“She wants the Christmas pitcher,” Elliot calls, elbowing Jordan out of the way so all three of my older brothers stand shoulder-to-shoulder in the doorway. “You’re getting it this year. I’m not going back up into that creepy-ass attic.”
“You’ll go up there if I tell you to go up there!
” My mom’s voice filters through the door followed by a chorus of female laughter, and I know one of those laughs belongs to Evan.
I could pick her voice out of a crowd of a million, and hearing it mixed with the voices of all my favorite people has warmth flooding my chest.
Grabbing the bags from the trunk, I head into the house. The first thing I see is Evan crowded onto the living room couch, surrounded by my mom, Jo, Amelia, and Hannah, grin on her face. As if she senses me watching, she looks up and beams at me.
And with that one single look, and my family around me, I’m home.