Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Iris
Sitting on the floor next to me, with our backs propped against the front of my new sofa, Cell sips her Diet Coke from a bright orange straw and bumps her shoulder into mine. “I can’t believe you bought this ugly couch.” She cackles as she stares at me out of the corner of her devious eye.
This bitch won’t let me live it down.
Not that I blame her. I wouldn’t let her live it down either.
Over a week ago, my furniture was delivered, including this monstrosity I blame on Dark. Had he not been touching me, I wouldn’t have agreed to buy this vintage couch with giant, lime-green flowers, dark green leaves, a cream background, and wooden accents.
It is by far the ugliest couch I’ve ever seen.
To which I am now the not-so-proud owner of.
Dragging a palm down my face, I laugh, and Cell joins in until we’re both howling at my hideous statement piece.
“At least it has character,” she crows, dabbing tears from under her eyes.
“Ugly character.” I snort.
“Ugly things need love, too.”
I bump my shoulder into hers. “It’s not sentient. It doesn’t have feelings.”
Twisting around, Cell pats the cushion. “It’s okay, baby girl, she didn’t mean to say that.”
“Cell.” I giggle. “Stop it.”
“She’ll grow to love you. All mothers learn to love even their ugliest children.”
Shaking my head, I bust a gut at my friend’s seriousness until I’m bent forward, clutching my stomach. “Stop,” I wheeze.
“You can’t get rid of your new baby, Iris.”
“I wasn’t planning on it.”
“Good.” Shoving her half-full can at me to hold, Cell crawls over to the new TV stand in a pair of shorts that flash me half of her ass, grabs the remote from the top, and crawls back over, where she claims her drink and drops the clicker onto my lap. “Pick something bloody, with hot men.”
Rolling my eyes at her obsession with sexy men, I turn on my new flatscreen. “Couldn’t you just watch the Red Room live streams to get that?”
“No. Those are Sola’s men.”
Ah. Yes. You shouldn’t fantasize about your sister’s partners. Then again, they’re masked, and they do this for money. So it’s not like they don’t know some women watch to get their rocks off to their bloody perversion. It’s not my cup of tea, but who am I to yuck anyone else’s yum?
“You need to get laid?” I tease, knowing she doesn’t sleep around and has an extensive sex toy collection.
“Shhhh…” Cell pushes a finger to her lips. “We don’t talk about my sex life. Just like we don’t talk about yours… or that Dark’s been drinking at the bar every night.”
“That’s none of my business.”
“Hmmm. I’m thinking you have a hot boy problem.”
“I have no such thing.”
“I think you have a bit of a crush on a certain hot biker, and I think that hot biker has a big crush too. On you.”
“I think you need to tell me what bloody movie we are watching.”
“How many days has it been since Dark came over?”
“Today.”
“Oh. When?”
“This morning,” I explain, refusing to tell her I don’t actually see him, and I haven’t seen him since our shopping trip.
But I wake up every morning to breakfast on my porch.
He doesn’t leave a note, but I know it’s from him.
There are no other visits. No texts. No nothing.
Not that I expect him to come by. Not when my shopping is done.
I have a house. I have furniture. I’m set up in my new life, in a new town.
Dark doesn’t owe me anything, and it’s not like I have a reason to seek him out.
That would make it seem like I like him, and I don’t like men. I don’t date. I don’t do relationships. Not real ones. If I can’t give him sex, then what else can I offer? We’ve already kinda ruled out friendship, given his southern blood flow…
It’s better this way.
Shoving Dark and his appendage from my mind, I turn on the classic Scream to watch.
“Does this count for hot men and blood?” I check with Cell, knowing it totally counts.
Cell wrinkles her nose and pretends to think long and hard. “Eh.” She shrugs. “Not enough blood, but Mathew is hot. So, this’ll work.”
“This is one of your favorite movies.”
Drew Barrymore pops on the screen, and Cell sits forward. “Shhhh… My movie with hot killers is on.”
Chuckling at her enthusiasm, I leave Cell to fulfill her monthly Scream quota and head to the kitchen to pop popcorn and scrounge up whatever sweet and salty snacks I find in the cupboards.
The sound of Drew screaming floods the house through the surround-sound system, and my neighbors can probably hear it.
I shove a handful of warm popcorn into my face and carry the bowl along with everything else back into the living room for our girls’ night. Only I stop short when a certain jean-clad man comes into view, sitting on the couch, and Cell is gone.
“What are you doing here?”
Dark turns the movie down. “I’m here for movie night.”
“No. Cell is here for movie night.”
“Well.”
“You two planned this,” I accuse.
It all makes sense now. Cell asked to come over to see the house again, when she’d already been by three times this week. She asked to watch a movie. She planned the time.
Oh. This woman is in so much trouble.
No.
They’re in so much trouble.
Dark
Fuck.
Just look at her.
My woman.
Standing there all red-faced and flustered.
Her breasts move with every heavy breath, and her nipples are hard as stone, peeking through the thin cotton of her T-shirt. She’s not wearing a bra. Hell… She’s barely wearing anything.
“Dark,” she barks with a sexy bite when I don’t respond fast enough.
The real question is, what do I tell her?
That I’ve been stalking her for days? That Cell called me out on it, and we devised this plan, so I stopped bein’ a creeper?
The cameras we installed alerted Cell. She knows I’ve been watching Iris.
Choosing not to say anything that’ll force me to lie, I pat the cushion beside me.
Iris doesn’t move, but those eyes bore into me. Sweat beads on the back of my neck as goosebumps rush down my arms, and my cock goes from Hi-Iris to We-Need-To-Come-For-Her.
Clearing my throat, I hitch my foot onto my knee to hide my arousal, then stretch my arm across the back of the couch. I still can’t believe she wanted this ugly thing.
Iris shakes her head, turns on her heel, and disappears back into the kitchen.
Well, fuck. This wasn’t part of the plan.
Cell swears Iris is into me, but I’m not so sure.
She’s a hard read sometimes. Which I get, but I can’t keep sneaking into her house every night if I want anything to come of this.
I can’t really get to know her, and she can’t really get to know me, if we’re not face-to-face, able to have real fuckin’ conversations that aren’t just awkward surface-level bullshit.
So I’m here.
To talk, keep my hands to myself, and feel this out.
Iris
Dumping the snacks onto the kitchen counter, the bowl of popcorn tips over and rains a mess of kernels all over the floor. I don’t bother cleaning it up as I grip the edge of the countertop and force myself to breathe.
We can’t keep doing this.
I can’t keep doing this.
The emotional whiplash is maddening.
Now he’s on my couch, looking like he does, and I’m supposed to what? Just sit down next to him and… Talk?
If he’d wanted a movie night with me, couldn’t he have asked? Isn’t that what normal men do? Ask?
Then again, nothing about us has been normal.
I drugged him.
Almost got him killed.
He moved me here.
Bought me a house.
After my sister got rid of me.
Ugh!
The urge to cry burns my nose.
I hate how I’ve been feeling. I hate change.
I hate not having any sort of direction.
I’ve spent the past week watching movies and walking around town, scoping it out, alone.
The only time I’ve seen Cell is when she drops by.
I haven’t sought anyone out. But I have taken care of my plants. That has to count for something, right?
I’m restless.
And now he’s here… again…
After he left me, again, for over a week this time.
Needing space, I march over to the back door and throw it open.
Then I thunder down the steps, barefoot, to release some of this tension.
At the bottom, I jump onto the cool grass to focus.
On the grass. Not him. On my steps. Not him.
On my breathing. Not him. This is new. Something Cell mentioned in passing that Kali taught her.
So I created a Pinterest board focused solely on mindfulness.
It’s not like I’ve had anything better to do.
Heck, I never even had Pinterest before I moved here.
I didn’t have the time. But now that I do, I’ve been pinning like crazy.
Which is silly, but it gives me a sense of purpose.
A focus. Interior design for my new house.
Learning to cook real food, in an oven and on a stove, not over an open fire.
I baked a boxed cake mix. Another first. It tasted good.
Is this what normal people do with their spare time?
If it is, I don’t know how you do it.
Sleep in a normal bed with air conditioning night after night. There are no critters here. No men to kill. No open fire to boil my morning coffee. My bathroom is nice. Not just a little nice, but nice, nice. With tile and a fan. It’s not temporary or owned by someone else. It’s mine.
My bathroom in my house.
My grass in my backyard.
My ugly-ass couch, a hot biker is sitting on. Putting his butt print on the cushions. Making the fabric smell of him.
“Iris?” Dark calls from my back door, sounding unsure, eh…hurt? Something I can’t quite put my finger on.
Focusing on the grass, I ignore his presence and don’t respond.
A moment later, air wafts past my shoulder, and the sound of feet on hard ground tells me he’s near. I open and close my fists at my sides and count my steps.
A shoulder brushes mine.
“Where’d you learn to ground?” he asks, following alongside me, step for step. His bare feet cut into the edge of my vision. Nice. Clean. Strong. Just like the rest of him. He could be a model. Feet modeling is a thing. He’d make good money at it.
I snort quietly at the thought.
Dark, a foot model.
From one side of my yard to the other, Dark keeps pace with me. His breathwork is oddly soothing as we move together. When the back of his hand brushes mine, heat pools low in my gut, and those silly flutters swarm my chest.
The second time it happens on a turn, I trip, but only a little. Not enough for him to notice.
Fire consumes my cheeks as I quicken my step and sweat beads on my head. At least I was smart enough not to put on a wig today.
There’s a mumble, and for a third time, the back of Dark’s hand touches mine, only he slips in beneath my palm and fastens our fingers together.
He doesn’t ask if it’s okay, and for some silly reason, I don’t pull away.
We hold hands. Step for step.
One. Two. Tree.
I count in my head to stay on track. Not focused on him.
“I’ve been visiting you at night,” Dark whispers as if he’s in confession. “Standing in your room, watching you sleep.”
I hold my breath.
Why would he do such a thing?
Watching me sleep? Invade my new home?
When I don’t respond, he continues. “Unless you tell me to fuck off…I’m gonna crawl into bed with you tonight.”
Dark’s statement rings with strong conviction as he slowly relaxes his fingers between mine and pulls away. Without another word, he slips on his boots and leaves me to walk through my backyard, lost in this new world… with his words playing on repeat in my head.
I’m gonna crawl into bed with you tonight.
Will he?
And if he does… What will I do?
And why do I not care that he watches me sleep?