Chapter 21 #2
“Once I put the boxes away, I thought the place needed a lick of paint.” He buried his hands in the pockets of those damn grey sweatpants. “I only planned to paint the bedroom, but then I thought, why stop there?”
The walls were no longer blinding white but rather a deep green. His books and journals were tucked away safely on a new bookshelf, and the sofa that I had no doubt Elliott slept on was now moved and pointed toward the open window.
Something inside my chest tightened as I spied a couple of photo frames that were not there before.
A photo of him and what I assumed was his niece, a blonde, blue-eyed beauty who had him grinning from ear to ear in the picture, took pride and center on his coffee table.
Photos of him and his brothers throughout the years sat at home on his bookshelf, along with one of him with an elderly, grey-haired woman, whose arm was wrapped protectively around his shoulders.
Elliott followed my gaze. “Thought it was time to make this place feel like a home and not a student hovel, you know?”
In one morning, he’d managed to make his apartment feel more like a home than my own family home ever did.
A pang of heartache rang through me as any anger from before slipped between my fingers like sand.
“You still want to do this?” I asked, tearing my attention away from his family photos.
“Of course I do.” Elliott shifted, and unfortunately for me, so did the sweatpants around his waist. A dark patch of hair flowing from his belly button further south sent a jolt straight between my legs.
My tongue slid along my bottom lip, my mind trying to picture exactly what that treasure trail of dark hair led to.
I’d felt it pressed against me more than once, and from feel alone, I knew it wouldn’t disappoint. I won’t deny that after feeling him grinding against me on the back of that horse, I clung to the feeling of him well into the night with only my vibrator to keep me company.
It was the first time I orgasmed without my fuck-face of an ex popping into my mind at the moment of climax and robbing me of sweet release.
Elliott grabbed the waistband quickly, stopping it from slipping further. The very tips of his ears turned red. “Uh, I’ll go and grab a shower. Wash all this paint off. I’ll be ready in ten minutes.”
It was like I was under some spell, unable to look away.
My thighs pressed together as my mind was filled with images of him in the shower—wet and soapy and so fucking hard…
No. Sweet lord, stop it right now.
I nodded like some brain-dead zombie, except this zombie was clearly hungry for something other than brains. “Um, yeah, probably a good idea.”
“Make yourself at home.” He retreated toward the bathroom. “There’s tea and coffee in the kitchen, help yourself to a cup, or you know, feel free to snoop.”
“You’re allowing me to snoop? Now that, Dr. D, is either the worst or best idea you have ever had.”
A low chuckle rumbled in his throat. “I trust you. Please try not to judge my organizational skills too much.”
Once alone, I released the tension coiled around my spine and distracted myself from the dirty thoughts swirling around my brain by doing what he told me to do—snooping.
I mean, who wouldn’t?
Studying the photographs of Elliott and his brothers as children was what I imagined historians felt like catching a glimpse of a rare, valuable moment frozen in time.
Though they were all smiling in the picture, I instantly spotted the sadness and pain in each of those young boys’ eyes.
Four broken boys, each of them appearing to carry the weight of the world on their tiny shoulders.
And still to this day, I saw the same look in Elliott no matter how hard he tried to hide it.
Running my fingertips along the spines of the books on his bookshelf, no surprise that medical textbooks and classic literature lined the shelves.
To my horror, there wasn’t a single romance book.
Looks like I’m going to have to fix that pronto.
Plonking myself on the sofa, I noticed a journal sitting on top of a book on the coffee table to my left.
Looking inside his journal was wrong, right?
I mean, he did say feel free to snoop, but there was a line. A hard, thick line I shouldn’t cross, no matter how much I wanted to.
No matter how much I wanted to try and understand the man who was making me feel things I swore to never feel again.
To stop myself reaching out and accidentally pushing the journal off the table, because I seriously didn’t trust myself this close to it, I shoved my twitching hands between the crevices of the sofa cushions.
Something hard brushed the tips of my fingers.
Grabbing the object, I fished it out and was met with a half-empty amber bottle.
Reading the label, concern buried itself between my ribcage. I didn’t know much about Xanax, but I knew they gave it to Nicholas whenever he had a particularly bad day in the home.
The nurses said it eased his extreme bouts of anxiety, though they reserved it for his worst days as it was known to be highly addictive.
Staring at the bottle, I tried to put the pieces together.
Elliott never mentioned having anxiety or being on any type of medication. Then again, why would he tell me that?
We weren’t actually together.
Yet the wave of concern I felt from him felt anything but fake.
The sound of the bathroom door opening had me plunging the bottle back in the depths of the sofa, and despite my brain telling me that it was none of my business, I couldn’t hear it over my heart.
My heart, pleading with me to get closer to Elliott, begging me to trust him, wishing for me to break my first and most important rule.
My heart longed for me to open myself back up to someone, someone like him, who I knew would treat me the way I deserved.
I just wasn’t sure if I was ready to listen.