Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
JAMESON
I don’t know if it’s the shrill ringing of her phone, or the annoyed tone in which she answers it, that has me jumping off the couch from a dead sleep.
“Why are you calling me, Justin?” She makes the name sound like a curse rolling off her tongue.
Wait? Who the fuck is Justin? I glance at my watch and it’s barely past 7:00 a.m.
“Yeah, you told me about you and Kenzie.” Her voice is flat, like she’s trying to sound disinterested.
I grab my phone, slip my pants on, and button them as I walk toward the stairs.
“I’m not interested—” She sounded like she had more to say, so I’m guessing she got interrupted. I want to see her face, so I know how she’s feeling about this conversation. I take the stairs two at a time, trying to be quiet because it doesn’t sound like the girls are up yet.
Predictably, based on how I can hear every word of this conversation, Lauren’s door is only halfway shut.
I push it open, and it’s dark in there, but I can see light coming from the crack in the mostly closed bathroom door.
“Justin, I’m not interested—”
I give two quick knocks before I push that bathroom door open, and Lauren spins toward me in surprise. She’s got a short white towel wrapped around her body, and her wet hair is freshly combed and dripping around her shoulders. She mouths My ex-boyfriend.
I hold out my hand for the phone and she gladly hands it over. When I bring it up to my ear, he’s still talking—a combination of yelling at her for being too stubborn to forgive him, and insisting he was the best thing that ever happened to her.
“I’m going to have to stop you right there,” I say, and the line goes silent. “She’s told you multiple times she’s not interested, so why the fuck are you still talking?”
“Who the hell are you?”
I’m so tempted to say I’m her date for the wedding, since I know he’s going to be there.
But she didn’t seem inclined to take me up on my offer last night, and as much as I want to force her into it in this moment, I want to respect whatever she feels like she needs and can handle.
Which right now, may not be having to introduce me to her family at a wedding.
“I’m the man whose name she’ll be screaming long after she forgets yours.”
The gratitude in Lauren’s eyes is replaced by something else as she considers my words. She drops her gaze to skim across my bare chest, and then drops it lower before her head shoots up. In her eyes, I see nothing but desire.
Good, because the friend zone is fine for the short term, but we’re not staying here much longer.
“We have to go now,” I say to Justin. “We’re busy.”
I hit the button to end the call and Lauren deflates against the sink cabinets behind her. “Thank you,” she says on an exhale. Then she shakes her head back and forth, saying, “God, I hate that asshole.”
“Then why did you answer the call?” I ask as I click over to the option to block the caller. Done.
“I was fresh out of the shower and didn’t want the ringer to wake the girls up, so I panicked.”
At the mention of her shower, I can’t help but focus on the beads of water running down her shoulders, across her chest, and pooling on the towel where it’s tucked in between her breasts.
Her chest is heaving, her breath coming out in sharp exhales, and without even looking back up at her, I know it means she’s noticed me staring at her half naked body.
She’s probably also noticed how fucking hard I am right now—a normal problem when waking up, made more extreme by finding her soaking wet and wrapped in a towel.
The combination of the humidity from her shower and the fact that all my blood is currently in my dick has me feeling like it would be a good idea to make some bad decisions right now.
Instead of giving into the temptation before she’s ready, I turn to leave.
But she reaches out and grabs my forearm, and when I turn to look at her, she’s staring at her fingers where they’re spread across the corded muscles.
“Maybe,” she says, her voice small and tentative, “I could use a date to the wedding after all.”
She’s asking because she’s nervous about seeing Justin, not because she wants me to go with her—and even though a few minutes ago I was okay with that option, now I’m realizing I don’t want to go unless she actually wants me there.
I lean closer. Just slightly . . . just enough that when she looks up, it forces her to lean back over the counter. One of her arms goes back to help her balance, and as her back arches, her breasts tilt up toward me, making that towel really work to keep her covered up.
“Then maybe you should ask me. Nicely.”
In the low light of early morning, her eyes are almost a dark blue, and goose bumps prickle her chest as my words come out slow and deep.
She raises an eyebrow in response, her chest heaves again, and then she says, “Jameson, would you please accompany me to my cousin’s wedding?”
I reach past her, planting my hand on the wall between the mirrors that hang above the sinks. “Of course I will.”
My lips are so close to hers I can feel when her breath hitches and she stops breathing. Then she clears her throat and starts to say something, and that’s when her girls start their chorus of “Momma! Up! Momma! Up!” from the other room.
Without a second of hesitation, she slips under my arm to go get them up. Meanwhile, I pull my phone out of my pants pocket and text Derek.
Jameson
Clear my schedule this morning, and all weekend.
Derek
You’re supposed to be in Toronto this weekend.
Jameson
Change of plans. I have to go to a wedding in Maine.
Derek
Who in the world is getting married in Maine?
Jameson
Hell if I know.
“This place is adorable,” Lauren says as we walk into the house we’re staying at for the wedding.
The mudroom is all slate floors and wooden benches with hooks above them for coats, along with ski racks and boot trays on the opposite wall.
Beyond that, we can see into the wide-open living room, dining room, and kitchen.
I set our suitcases down and shut the door behind me.
“Paige is going to be bummed to have missed out on staying here.”
“Why’d she decide to stay at your parents’ house?”
“Since you were going to drive me up today, she ended up coming up last night so she could go to the rehearsal, and she didn’t want to stay here alone.”
Given the text conversation with Petra the other night, I suspect Paige wanted to give us the whole place to ourselves. But I’ll let her believe this story if she wants to. She’s still getting used to the idea of me in her life.
We leave our stuff in the mudroom and wander into the living room, which is light and bright, with lofted wood-planked ceilings and white walls—it looks like something straight out of a Pottery Barn catalog.
The dining area has a simple farmhouse table and eight chairs, and opens to the brand new kitchen.
My sisters would love this place; it’s exactly the kind of ski house getaway they’d love to work on.
“How’d you find this place?” I ask Lauren.
“It’s my little brother Dale’s best friend’s house.
Lucas lives in Boston but has been remodeling this place for a while, I guess.
His work schedule is really intense, so he doesn’t get up here that often.
He said Paige and I could stay here since it would be empty.
” It’s sparsely furnished, and I’m not sure if that’s an intentional decision, or if it’s because the place has clearly been remodeled recently.
“That was nice of him.”
“He and Dale have been best friends since they were in elementary school. He was practically like a fourth little brother to me.”
“Do you see him at all in Boston?”
“No, I haven’t seen him in years, actually. I think Paige talks to him occasionally, which is how we ended up staying here.”
We double back to a small hallway off the living room, and she pushes open a bedroom door, but the room is empty.
We move on to the next door, which opens to a completely new bathroom.
There’s only one door left off the small hallway, and when she pushes that one open, we walk into a large bedroom with a king-size bed in it.
It sits atop an enormous rug that covers most of the floor.
Off to the side, there’s a dresser, and on the opposite wall is a big mirror leaning up against the wall.
Lauren looks around, walks to a doorway across the room, and opens it. On the other side of the door is the bathroom we saw from the hallway.
“Did we . . . miss a bedroom somewhere?” she asks.
“I don’t think so.”
“I . . .” She doesn’t complete the sentence, just stands there looking dumbstruck. Then she pulls her phone from her back pocket and shoots off a text.
I send her a questioning look.
“Just texting Paige to ask about the sleeping arrangements,” she tells me.
I take a few steps toward her and she takes a deep gulp, like she’s swallowing down all her feelings and fears.
“I can sleep on the couch again, Lauren. It’s not a big deal.”
“I think it’s my turn to sleep on the couch,” she says with a nervous laugh.
“There are no turns here. If there’s a bed, you’re sleeping in it. End of story.”
She plants her hands on her hips. “How’s that fair?”
“It isn’t. This isn’t about fairness.”
“What’s it about then?”
“It’s about me giving you what you need. The space and the time to figure out what you want. And when you’re ready to admit that this is more than friendship, you’ll know where to find me.”
“On the couch?”
“Until you’re ready for me to be in your bed, yes.”
“Jameson,” she whispers my name. “I’m not a one-night stand kind of girl. I can’t do casual hookups, and I value our friendship way too much to let sex get in the way.”
I take another step closer. “What in the world have I said to make you think I wanted this thing between us to be a one-night stand?”
She looks up at me, her eyes huge and her breathing erratic. “You don’t . . . you don’t do relationships.”
Is this what she’s believed all along? That all I ever wanted with her was a casual hookup? When I said I’d wait until she was ready, did she think I meant ready to sleep with me and nothing more?
“I didn’t do relationships.”
Her eyes search my face. “What changed?”
My mind wars with itself. Being honest opens me up to being hurt, but at the same time, it was my lack of openness that made me lose her in the first place. And that’s not a risk I’m willing to take again.
“You showed up in my life and reminded me that you were what I’d wanted all along.”
“But . . .” she stammers. “We’re friends.”
“There is no world in which I want to be your friend, Lauren. That world has never and will never exist for me.”
There, now my truth is out in the open. And it’s up to her to decide what she wants to do with it.
Her phone rings in her hand, and in the silence of the room, it’s alarmingly loud. She glances down at it, and her finger hovers over the “decline” button, but then she looks up at me. “It’s Morgan.”
“You’d better take it, then.” There’s no way she should ignore that call when Morgan’s at home with her kids.
She looks down at the phone, then back up at me, but the moment is broken. I can feel it, and so can she.
“I have work emails I need to send,” I say, stepping back. “You should answer the phone.”
I can see in her eyes that she’s not sure she’s ready for this—there was a sense of relief when the call came through. So I’m going to respect that and make it easy for her, even though I know she’s wrong. She is ready. But she’s scared.
Her life has been flipped upside down these past few months. The one thing in this world she doesn’t need is to be pressured into something she doesn’t feel ready for. So I can wait as long as it takes.