Twenty-nine
Heath
I wake up in a bush. Not the fun kind.
Teagan’s hair is halfway up my nose. I push it from my face and settle back onto the pillow. Somehow, we’re spooning. My eyes trace over her body laid against me. One arm folded against her bare chest, the other outstretched, her fingers woven between mine. How we ended up this way, I don’t remember, but she looks comfortable. I am too.
Inching forward, I brush my lips against her nape, smelling her cocoa butter–sweet scent. With a kiss, I taste her skin as I continue to breathe her in.
Last night was a trip. The last thing I expected to do was cry like a bitch, but here we are. I didn’t know she was dealing with the shit she was. I guess she didn’t know what I was dealing with either. Mortifying or not, it felt good to let it out. I’m happy last night is behind us, and even happier that Teagan is still here. Another violation of the contract, but right now, I couldn’t care less.
My phone buzzes loudly against my nightstand. Careful not to wake her, I roll to my side and reach to grab it. Shelley’s message glares on my screen.
Shelley: I can wait to see you tonight :)
I look at Teagan, then back at my phone. So much went down last night, I completely forgot about my rain check with Shelley.
“Why is your apartment so cold?” Teagan grumbles.
I didn’t know she was awake. “Hey.”
Her hand squeezes mine before her fingers slip away. She rolls to her back, still in my arm, and stretches with a cute little squeak. I try not to stare at her tits as she does.
Her eyes blink open and look up at me. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”
“It’s fine. I know I wore you out.”
“He’s so meek in the morning.” She brushes her hands over her forehead, her eyes going wide when she reaches her hairline. “Damn it.”
She sits up to mess with it, taking her chest from my view but replacing it with her perfect ass. She looks like a Greek muse when she pulls the white sheet over her chest, holding it there with a propped up knee, her hair tumbling into her face as she unravels it pin by pin.
I lean up beside her, and she glances at me. Her hesitation mimics mine. I don’t know if she expects me to kick her out or take her again. I’m not sure which I want to do either.
“Do you want breakfast?” I ask.
“Um.” She thinks for an insulting length of time. “Yeah, sure. From where?”
“Here.”
“There’s a restaurant downstairs?”
I chuckle. “No, here . I’ll make some.”
She continues to stare at me. “Make breakfast? You? ”
“Cut me some slack. I turn your uptight ass out like it’s nothing. You think I can’t figure out how to make avocado toast?”
“Well . . .”
“Shut up.” I laugh.
I climb out of the bed and grab some pants from my drawer, watching as she takes the sheet with her when she follows me. She curses when she finds only her dress and heels on the floor.
“You can borrow some of my clothes.”
She grins. “Thanks.”
I leave her for the kitchen, grabbing what I need and getting to work. As I’m sorting pans, lighting burners, splitting avocados, my phone buzzes on the counter again. I ignore it and crack the first egg, listening to the perfect sizzle as it hits the pan.
“This is actually happening?” Teagan says when she finally emerges from my bedroom. She swims in my favorite Nike jogger set, her hair parted in the middle and braided down either side, two little curls escaping by each ear. “You’re cooking. In a kitchen. And nothing is on fire.”
“Yeah. Look, I can even do this.” I concentrate on my flip, lifting the pan at the right time and catching the egg in the perfect place.
She looks impressed, pulling out a stool to watch from the kitchen island behind me. “I’m not gonna lie. This is kind of turning me on.”
Good .
I give the eggs a dash of this and a sprinkle of that before sliding them onto the plate in front of her. “Cracked black pepper and paprika? Heath, if you want to bend me over the counter again, just say that.”
A smirk tugs at my cheeks. “Don’t give me suggestions.”
While wiping the pan, I watch her eye her plate. No hesitation crosses her face when she picks up her fork, or when she takes a bite. I exhale with relief. She’s okay, relatively speaking, like she said. I lean forward and press a kiss to her cheek. She returns my smile when I leave her for the range. Poaching is still a little out of my realm, but me and a runny yolk have an understanding.
When I turn back around, she looks pissed. “What?”
She glares at me with those big eyes, but a little smile perks at her lips. “How are these eggs so fucking good?”
“You’re lying.”
“No! I’m legit mad at you right now.”
Inside, I’m beaming. “Funny how being forced to be self-sufficient makes you grow up. Don’t tell my dad.”
“Your secret is safe with me.”
I know it is. At this point, most of my secrets are only safe with her. “Do you want some orange juice? Coffee?”
“Yes.”
“Which one?”
“Yes.”
With a laugh, I set a mug and a kettle next to her, then pour her a glass of juice. Sliding onto the stool next to her, I notice her plate is almost empty when she takes the juice from me. I’m glad she told me what was really happening with her. Worrying that she was struggling in the same way as Mom almost broke me. Not that having her parents fucking with her head is much better, but at least there’s a way I can help her.
“Hey, uh . . .” I trail off. It’s still awkward. “Thanks for last night.”
“I should thank you too. Having four orgasms was cool or whatever.”
“Damn. If I knew cooking was all it took to get you to be nice to me, I would have done it sooner.”
She grins at me. “I hate you, but maybe not everything about you.”
A smirk pulls at my cheek. “I’ll take it.”
“I should tell you.” She puts her hand on my knee and gives me the human version of puppy dog eyes. Bad news. “You’re likely stuck when it comes to your mom’s treatment. As far as I know, a spouse is the default decision maker unless a health care proxy is modified to designate someone else. And that would still only come into effect if they deem her incapacitated or not sound of mind.”
My brain swirls while attempting to translate her words into English. “What does that mean?”
“Legally, your dad is the default person who gets to make decisions for her when she can’t. She could change that if she wanted, or if she felt she needed to.”
That I understood, but I wish I didn’t. My mom is making her own decisions. She doesn’t want my help. Maybe it’s her way of protecting me, or coddling me, like Dad says.
Teagan gives me a hesitant look, but I appreciate her straight answer. I let my eyes fall to my plate, nodding instead of replying with words. Her hand squeezes my knee. “I can get you a legal consult to verify, but it’s ultimately her decision in what treatment she gets, if any. I’m sorry.”
Even if my dad is convincing her to go to rehab rather than a psychiatrist, it’s still her choice. She’ll go to rehab like he wants, call me to get her out, I’ll do it, Dad will be pissed, we won’t talk, and I’ll get blamed while Mom doesn’t get better. And we’ll do it over and over until she wants it to change.
I shake my head. “Don’t be sorry. I figured as much.”
The kettle clicks. She turns her attention from me to the French press. I watch her absentmindedly chew on her lip while she focuses on pouring the water and putting the plunger into place. She’s so goddamn beautiful when she’s just existing . If there wasn’t scalding water between us, I’d happily toss her onto the countertop and convince her to let me take her right now.
I slide my hand down her back, letting it linger on her hip. “What about you?”
“Me?”
“I can’t get your parents to fuck off, but there has to be something I can do. What’s the next item on your list of stressors?”
She stares at me for a moment, then looks down. “The wedding. Honestly, I can handle the event coordination and vendor shit, it’s just the guys.”
“Well, shit. I know I need to save on rent, but a quadruple homicide is gonna put me in a small apartment for a while .”
“Stop it.” She laughs.
“Did you tell Mary about what Ryan said to you in Vegas?”
“What did he say?”
“That he should marry you instead of her.”
Her eyes study me to find the motive behind my question. “You heard that?”
“Yeah.” I’m usually not territorial, but I would have dislocated Ryan’s jaw if she hadn’t started laughing right after he said it.
“I didn’t and I won’t. Ryan loves Mary more than anything. He got in his own head about having to be a big boy now, then got fucked up and made it my problem. Brett is the worst influence ever.”
“How was that his fault?”
“His secret party favors.” She taps the side of her nose. “I’m honestly shocked it wasn’t Ritchie.”
Same, but he brought a different type of drama to that weekend. “I can help keep the guys in check from now through the wedding, no problem.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. You have no idea how much I’ve been wanting an excuse.” I crack my knuckles. “You won’t hear a peep from Brett or Ritchie until we get back. But what should I do about Jeremy?”
“I don’t know if we can do anything about that. He’s so done with us, and at this point, I can’t even be mad.”
“Why?”
“The things he said weren’t wrong. Have we—” She turns to me, her knees settling between mine. I can’t keep my hand from her thigh. “Have we been dealing with their shit so long that we’ve given up on expecting them to be better? I know they’re problematic in a global sense, but . . . are we the ones tolerating their bullshit, or are we the shitty friends and haven’t realized it yet?”
I snort. “Babe, be for real. Look at us. We’re fucking amazing.”
She chuckles. “Right. And so humble.”
“We have shitty friends, for sure.”
“For sure.”
We share a laugh, finally. Her smile does things to me. It makes me want to burn everything to the ground to make it stay, and at the same time, I want to wipe it off her face by kissing her until her lips bleed.
When I inch forward, she turns away. “I am running so late. I need to grab my shit and get out of here,” she says.
“Oh. Yeah. My bad.” I move out of her way. She disappears into my bedroom again.
What is wrong with me? We have a little cry sesh and great sex and now I’m tripping. Teagan being a little friendlier with me—still only a fraction of what we used to have—doesn’t change anything. She made an entire contract just to make sure our situationship didn’t turn into anything more, and I agreed to it.
At the time.
I try to find something to ground myself and bring me back to reality. The best I can manage is to scald my mouth with my coffee.
Teagan comes back out with that massive dress thrown over her arm. Her shoes dangle from her fingers somewhere beneath it. “I’ll meet you back here tonight,” she says. “Seven?” Only then do I remember.
“Um . . . I kind of have another date tonight.” I say the words and instantly want them back.
“Kind of?” She looks at me. Her eyebrow lifts in understanding. “You’re getting serious.”
“Well, no. But I promised her we would go, and it would be shitty to cancel on her. Right?”
I want her to give me a reason not to go. Say anything to show me I’m not making all this shit up in my mind. I like Shelley. A lot. But she doesn’t make me feel like this .
Saying what’s on my mind—especially before I have it figured out for myself—will ruin everything. It’s in the contract, all thanks to me. Catching feelings is a full stop. If we end it now, it’s all over, and she disappears from my life like last summer. I don’t know what I want exactly, but I know I don’t want to lose her two seconds after getting her back.
“Don’t do that thing,” she stops me.
“What thing?”
She sets her heavy clothes on the stool with a sigh. “That thing where you get in your head about how you feel and then turn into a self-sabotaging dumbass.”
I can’t help but smile. “Your assessments of me are always spot-on.”
She steps closer, coming to stand right in front of me. My hands find her waist as I stare up at her. The look in her eyes makes my next breath a struggle.
“Tell me the truth.” She crosses her arms and tilts her head to the side. “Are you catching feelings?”
I gape at her in surprise, wondering how she sees through me so well. It scares me, but the answer is right there, hanging in the tension between us.
“Yeah,” I admit. “I think I am.”
Her mouth twitches into a little smirk. “Then we pause.”
Reality slaps me across the face.
“Pause?”
“That’s what’s in the contract, isn’t it?”
That’s what we agreed to do if I caught feelings for someone else. Not if I caught feelings for her .
She doesn’t see it.
Who was I kidding? Teagan hates me. There’s not a world where she would ever let herself have feelings for me that are greater than her contempt.
“Give it a chance, Heath. A real one. You deserve a nice girl who makes you happy.” Her chuckle is a punch in the gut. A nail in the coffin of my dead hopes and unrequited desires. She turns away to grab her things, slipping from my grasp. “And, if you accidentally scare her off when your inner fuckboy slips out, you know where to find me.”
I don’t know what to say, so I default to dumbass, just like she said. “Cool. I’ll, um, call you if something changes, I guess?”
“Don’t call me.” Her smile shows the kind intent behind her words. She swings the folded dress over one arm and hugs me with the other. I grip her back, still confused by what’s happening. “Have fun with Shelley. I mean it.” She kisses my cheek and pulls away.
“Okay.”
With that, she leaves. And for some reason, I let her.