Three
Teagan
My eyes snap open to a room I don’t recognize. Where the fuck am I?
Slate-colored walls and dark hardwood floors frame an expansive living space, only interrupted by velvet and leather furniture in coordinating shades of black and gray. White charmeuse curtains barely block the sun beaming through the tall windows into the otherwise dark space. It looks like a millennial bachelor gave up halfway through decorating and hired someone with taste to finish the rest. More importantly, I’ve spent a night and all morning in a place I don’t know, doing god knows what.
When I sit up, my head screams at me. Open bars are only fun until the next day, a lesson I should have learned by now. Looking down, I find I’m on a couch with a faux fur blanket draped over me. I blink until my vision clears, my head throbbing, and find the naked man lying on the floor next to me.
My heart races when I see him. Recognizing the black tattoos on his shoulder and thighs makes it worse. “Heath?”
He groans as if telling me to shut up.
Oh shit . Oh shit, shit, shit . I sit up straight and cover myself with the blanket. “Heath!”
His head darts up from his pillow. “What? Am I late?”
“Late for what, shithead? It’s Sunday.”
He looks over at me, his hair twisted with day-old product. “Then what the hell, Teags? Stop yelling, my head hurts.” He lays his head back down like nothing is out of place.
I nudge him with my foot. “What am I doing here? Why are you naked?”
He groans again. “Chill, dude. Seriously.” He sits up, pulling the blanket from his bare buttocks onto his lap. “We didn’t have sex, if that’s what you’re asking—not that you didn’t want to.”
When my head stops pounding, I realize I’m still partially dressed, my shapewear still squeezing the life out of my waist and pushing my tits as close to heaven as possible. Taking shapewear off is difficult enough, but putting it on? That’s a task for someone who is much more sober and dedicated to a smooth silhouette than I was last night.
“Do you remember the party? Coming home in the cab?” he asks. “Do you remember telling me to take off my clothes, or laughing yourself to sleep when I had trouble getting it up?”
I stifle a laugh. “That does seem like something I’d do.”
His eyes narrow with annoyance and the memories from last night begin to return. The bar, the many, many drinks that led to my inability to hold my tongue or walk a straight line. Classic Teagan behavior.
“I need to pee.”
“Bathroom’s through there. Knock yourself out,” he says, flopping back onto his pillow.
With the blanket securely wrapped around me, I get up and scramble through the door of his bedroom. Inside is a king-sized bed with a jersey comforter the same color as the walls. Why couldn’t he let me sleep in here? Not that it would be a good idea to be in Heath’s bed. Again.
Sliding the pocket door closed behind me, I tear at my shapewear. After minutes of struggle, I sit and sigh with relief. It makes me wonder why I put them on in the first place. No dress is worth that.
Wait. Where is my dress?
I clean up and leave the bathroom, shapewear in hand, blanket tight around me, and find Heath standing in the bedroom rummaging through the drawers of his dresser. He looks over at me with tired eyes and smirks.
“Can you let me borrow some clothes or something?” I ask. “There’s no way in hell I’m going home looking like I’m doing a walk of shame.”
“Sure.” He chuckles, then tosses me a shirt and, after a moment of searching, some sweatpants.
“Thanks.”
“Yep.”
I try to keep myself covered with the blanket while I put them on, pretending I’m not embarrassed to be standing in my underwear in front of someone who could be a literal underwear model. Not that he hasn’t seen it before.
Heath has a soccer body, but his mom’s Samoan genes work overtime. I’m tall for a woman, but compared to him at six foot four, his pant legs bunch up on my ankles. I’ll look like a kid wearing their older sibling’s hand-me-downs, but it’s better than trudging through the Upper West Side in what is clearly last night’s ball gown.
I turn around, drop the blanket, and pull the shirt on. When I turn back, he’s staring at me with a laughing expression. “What?” I snip.
“Why do you always act like you hate me?”
“Because I do hate you,” I answer matter-of-factly.
“You didn’t hate me last night. And you definitely didn’t hate me after Brett’s wedding,” he says with a conniving grin. Of course he would bring that up. “You remember last summer, right? The hotel right off the beach. That humid night the AC went out and we couldn’t sleep, so we stayed up and spent hours having hot, sweaty se—”
“Stop.”
I try my hardest not to remember that night. Not to say that the sex wasn’t good—it was amazing, actually. Mind-blowing, really. The kind of sex you think about while buzzing your clit off after your talentless boyfriend leaves you high and dry again. But it’s Heath, the biggest douchebag on the planet. I’d rather kick a rat while wearing open-toed shoes again than pay him the compliment.
He steps closer to me, invading my personal space. My eyes trace down his defined chest and abs. The low ride of his pants provides a teasing view of the only dash of hair on his otherwise waxed body. It’s frustrating how fine he is, but Heath won the genetic lottery. His dad was a heartthrob quarterback, his mom a Miss Universe contestant. Together they made one objectively stunning human. And he absolutely knows it.
“You rocked my world and then didn’t talk to me for six months,” he says. “I didn’t see you until Ryan’s Christmas party, and you acted like it never happened.”
The memory makes my heartbeat quicken, but I play it cool. “So?”
“So . . .” He steps closer but I refuse to shy away. “It didn’t feel nice to get brushed off like that.”
“There are a few women who might call that karma, Heath.”
He lets out a heavy sigh. “You hate me. I get it. Most of the time I hate you too. We both know we’d have nothing to do with each other if it wasn’t for the guys and Levi.”
My brick-wall facade cracks when Heath says Levi’s name. My brothers are my everything. Levi and I are close, but he has always worshiped the ground Heath walks on, even before they trauma bonded over their injuries. We almost lost Levi after his accident. Heath was there the whole time, helping Levi through his recovery, and still helping with his physical therapy today. No matter how much I’ve wanted to be rid of Heath, he’s always been in my life in one way or another.
Heath twists the drawstrings of my pants around his fingers and then tugs them. My eyes snap up to his, but I ignore the warmth igniting between my legs. “Why is it so hard for you to admit you want me?”
“I don’t want you.”
“You sure?” he asks. “You seem to want a certain part of me.”
When he moves closer, I step back, hitting the wall. He reaches forward and places his hands on my hips, pulling them gently against his. I fight to ignore the pounding in my chest and somewhere much lower.
“You know and I know that under all your control freak bullshit is a regular old freak. Everything we talked about last night, your frustration over missing an orgasm you know I could give you in five minutes,” he says with a cocky grin. His hands slide up my waist slowly, making me shiver. “You know what you really want, but then you waste time on some prick who can’t get you off.”
“You’re saying I should waste my time on a prick who can get me off instead?”
“That’s still an upgrade.”
“Lord.” The bar really is in hell.
He laughs and lets go of my waist. It irritates me when I feel colder after he does. “Think about it, Teags. You’re busy with school, I have my internship at the ortho clinic taking up most of my time, and that doesn’t include all the wedding party bullshit we have stacked up,” he says. “We’ll be stuck together all summer, and we’re both too busy to be on dating apps swiping through randoms for the chance at occasional, mediocre sex.”
Is he making a valid point? “What are you suggesting we do instead?”
“Why don’t we make some kind of arrangement? You and me this summer.”
“An arrangement? You and me?” I repeat with suspicion.
“It’s not a relationship. At best it’s like a . . . situationship.”
My eyes narrow as I try to find a way to hate his idea. “In theory, that sounds great, but how would that ever work?”
“The only reason it doesn’t work is because people can’t be real with their expectations. We can fuck each other’s brains out and still manage not to talk to each other afterward. It’s pretty clear what we do and don’t want from each other.”
Arguments are my forte, but even I can’t find a rebuttal to his claim. “If the guys even catch a whiff of this, we’ll never hear the end of it.”
“They didn’t find out about last summer and it happened right next to them. Loudly.” Again, he taunts me, making it worse when he steps away and crosses his arms, his biceps and abs flexing as he does. “You’re the law student. If you need rules, think some up. See if we can agree on something for once.”
All the possibilities of how this could end badly run through my mind. As much as I hate him, he presents a rather attractive offer. Maybe he’s the attractive part. Even reeking of last night’s alcohol, he still has me drooling.
A smile spreads across his face. “The way you’re looking at me right now makes me think we have a deal.”
I take a breath and steel myself back into my poker face. “I’ll think about it.”