Chapter 21 #2
“Yeah, anything that I would have worn for it was completely shredded, so I’ll need to go shopping,” she answered, a shadow passing over her as soon as the words left her mouth.
He hated that. That broken and frightened glimmer in those beautiful, meadow-colored eyes of hers.
Nothing should be there but beauty and sunshine, and certainly not that.
Charlie hated it so much that he wanted to flip the table over, but he held himself in check.
It would take time for her to feel safe again, and he was going to do his damnedest to make sure that happened.
“I’ll go with you when you do. Just in case,” he said, his gaze unintentionally lowering to her arms. The bruises there were starting to fade, but even seeing the hint of them on her made his blood boil all over again.
“Let’s cross that bridge when we get there,” Sam replied. “First, however, we need to go have some fun.”
“Fun? What, you don’t think sitting here in my apartment all day is fun?” He chuckled again.
Sam rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean. We’ve been cooped up in here for a few days. I think we should get out.”
“What’d you have in mind?”
She tapped her chin idly with her index finger as she chewed on her reply. “I just want to do something normal. What else do people do for dates?”
Charlie raised an eyebrow at her. “A date, huh?”
She tapped his foot with hers. “Yes, a date. You didn’t think I was completely giving up, did you?”
He had wondered, and he wouldn’t have blamed her if she had decided to call the whole thing off, given the circumstances. It had only been a few days since she’d moved in with him, and he’d been too afraid to even bring it up.
The relief he felt at the mischief tugging her lips into a smile was palpable, but he tried not to show it as he shrugged. “I don’t know. You’re the expert, right? You’re writing the romance novel, after all.”
“Maybe dancing? We could check out that club across town that just opened?”
Charlie knew he was in for trouble.
He raised an eyebrow at her. “Dancing? You?”
“Yeah! What’s wrong with that?”
“Last time I checked, you had two left feet,” he teased, earning him another tap from her foot.
“Your memory is too long. That was years ago.” She pouted, jutting her lower lip out at him.
Also true, it had been quite a few years since either of them had hit up a club. The last time he could remember was back when they were in college.
“Fine. How about we go Friday night?”
She smiled then, a completely infectious look that forced his own smile to widen. “Deal.”
Charlie leaned against the kitchen counter as he waited for the coffee to brew.
He had tried, he really did, to fall asleep that night, but it proved to be in vain.
Again.
In all honesty, Charlie hadn’t slept very well the past several nights.
Every sound, every voice that echoed from somewhere in the building, every creak from the nearby staircase, and Charlie would leap up from the bed he’d made himself on the couch. Rinse and repeat most nights.
Even when he did manage to get to sleep, he found no solace there. That was when the nightmares came. And each time, he’d violently wake to the memory of Sam screaming.
Much like he had tonight.
Once ready, Charlie poured coffee into one of his larger mugs, needing the extra room in it for the caffeine he so desperately needed.
He didn’t wait long enough for the steam to dissipate before swallowing down his first taste of it, almost needing that burn on his tongue to remind him that he was no longer dreaming.
Sam was safe.
She was asleep in the next room.
In his bed.
He lowered himself onto one of the kitchen barstools, cup in hand. He glanced down at his watch as he took another sip. Eleven o’clock on the dot. A new record for him. He’d only managed half an hour before giving up this time. It’d be another long, restless day, unfortunately.
The couch wasn’t exactly the most comfortable for long-term sleeping, but it worked in a pinch. He’d insisted on letting Sam have the bedroom while she stayed with him—for privacy’s sake, he’d argued.
In reality, it was because he could easily see the front door from the couch.
Sam hadn’t said much about the change to her routine, though the two of them had fallen into a pretty comfortable one since that first night.
They’d set up shop in the living room, both working on their laptops in comfortable silence until work time was over, and they would hang out as they normally would.
He’d caught her, more than once, looking longingly out of the nearby window as she nursed a cup of coffee. Her nose scrunched up, as if she were trying to imagine the taste of her favorite cafe drink but failing.
All because of Paul.
Even thinking that name caused Charlie to grind his teeth and force another piping hot sip down his throat, reveling in the burn that followed.
He hadn’t been able to go to the gym since she’d been staying with him, not wanting to leave her alone for too long, and it was starting to show how much he needed it at times like this.
Only at the gym was it socially acceptable to punch something until you were too exhausted to continue.
He made a mental note that he should probably order one for the apartment when he wasn’t in such a brain fog.
Sam’s face flashed in his mind, the frightened one she had when he’d first found her in that hallway—not the brave one she’d sprawled on her face since then.
He’d seen Sam in various stages of her, with all of the good and bad that came with that. But he’d never seen her look that afraid before.
A fact he wasn’t soon to forget.
He hadn’t wanted to tell her before how scared he had been. The thought that there had been a remote possibility he could’ve lost her was… Well, it was too awful to even think about.
The fact that it seemed like they’d just barely missed Paul… if they’d skipped ice cream and headed straight home instead, she’d have walked right into him...
Dread twisted down his spine like a poisoned vine at the thought, causing a shiver to wrack his body.
He mulled over his options on how to kill time and distract himself from thinking about that, knowing in his gut that he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep again tonight.
Pulling his laptop out of his bag to get some work done didn’t feel very appealing, especially given the brain fog sweeping through his head at the moment.
His Kindle was perched next to the coffee table, where he’d last left it a few days prior.
He’d still been working his way through one of the books he’d gotten after his and Sam’s date to the bookstore.
Continuing seemed like the logical thing to do, so he gathered his coffee cup and went over to the couch.
He wasn’t entirely sure whether his sleep-addled mind would comprehend much of what he’d read, but it was better than sitting there with his own thoughts.
He didn’t make it more than a few pages before the sound of laughter startled him, almost causing him to spill coffee all over himself. He jumped forward, quickly putting the cup onto the table before it sloshed onto him, and looked in the direction of the laughter.
Sam burst from the bedroom, vastly more awake than even he was, with tears streaming down her face.
Momentary panic was instantly replaced with amusement when she doubled over, the sound of laughing bubbling through.
Her top lip clenched down over her bottom as if trying to prevent herself from being too loud, but with a loud puff of air, she began laughing anyway—hooting and howling loud enough that it would definitely wake any neighbors trying to sleep nearby.
“Oh my God, babe, I have to show you this,” she wheezed, trotting over with her laptop in hand and dropping down onto the couch next to him.
His arm closest to her lifted and went to rest on the back of the couch, an opportunity she took advantage of as she scooted in close, practically nestling into his side as she propped her laptop on his lap.
“I thought you were asleep?” he asked.
“Nah, I was up reading when Angel sent me this,” she said, pointing eagerly at the screen.
Charlie turned his attention to the laptop, perusing the contents for a second until a few keywords caused his face to flame.
Upon seeing the change in his gaze, Sam rolled her eyes.
“Just read, I promise I’m not trying to be weird. ”
It was a quick read, only a paragraph long, but the content was… confusing, to say the least. Despite the sexual nature of it—which, granted, it had been a while since he’d last had sex—it felt as if he’d read an entirely different language. Nothing made sense.
He paused, flicking his gaze back to the top of the paragraph and read it a second time. His nose scrunched, trying to make sense of the jumbled mess of words.
“Who the hell wrote this?”
Sam giggled. “I’ve seen a few posts like this on those men writing women threads, where men are trying to write sex scenes, but this one takes the cake.”
“A man wrote this?” he asked incredulously. “I mean, I’ve heard of those threads, too, but yeah, you’re right, this takes the cake. I thought this was something an AI might have spat out.”
It would’ve honestly been less surprising if that had been the case.
“I know. That’s what I thought, too! But no, this was by an officially published author. Like… someone had to edit this.”
Charlie’s eyebrows shot up. “An editor saw this and gave it a pass?”
Sam’s head fell onto his shoulder as she held her stomach and laughed again. “I’ll never complain about the editors I’ve worked with ever again, I swear!”
Narrowing his eyes on a particular part of the paragraph, Charlie couldn’t help but laugh along with her. “For reference, a dick cannot do that. They’re not garden hoses.”
That statement sent Sam into a deeper spiral of hysterics, falling fully into Charlie’s lap from the force of her undiluted laughter. Her body pushed the laptop perched there so much that it almost fell to the floor before he caught it.
It was the first time he’d seen her smile like that since the break-in, and despite how amusing the article was, it was nothing in comparison to seeing her laugh like that.
The sound of it rippled through the air like waves in a tide pool, both enchanting and comforting.
It tugged on something deep in Charlie’s chest, and it was exactly what he needed.
“I mean, alright, I know this whole fake dating thing is for you to learn, but this is not the kind of material to study from,” he finally stated before pausing. Oh, that’s right, they weren’t supposed to bring it up. What had she called it? Fight club rules?
Sam didn’t say anything for a moment, and he feared he might have said the wrong thing until she patted his leg. “It’s a good thing, then, that you’re such a great teacher.”
“Yeah?” he asked, now more curious than anything.
She nodded, looking up at him from where her head rested on his lap and biting her lower lip to likely stop herself from laughing so hard, but the effect it had on him was much different.
He fought to keep a hold of himself as she shook in his lap.
“Yeah, I think you’re more of a romantic than you let on. ”
He grinned; he couldn’t help himself. “The highest compliment coming from the writer.”
“Well,” she continued as she turned her head to point out a particularly awful sentence from the selection on the screen, “as my current fake boyfriend and resident romantic, what are your thoughts on the kissing part of the scene he has written?”
Charlie glanced at the screen, rereading the section once more before chuckling. “That’s not a kiss.”
“It’s not?” she asked.
“No, that’s an insult to kissing.”
Sam bit her lip. “What would you consider to be a better kiss, then?”
There was a hint of mischief twinkling in those smoldering green eyes of hers, a silent challenge issued. He had to admit that it surprised him, but it was a challenge he absolutely wasn’t about to back down from.
“This,” he replied as he leaned down and captured her lips with his.
How on earth someone’s lips could be this soft, this addicting, he would never know. But kissing Sam felt like the worst kind of addiction that he feared he’d never break. Memories of their kiss in the hallway burned in his veins. He wanted to feel more of her, taste more of her.
He deliberately kept this kiss slow and gentle—soft pecks that left a promise of more. Though, when a little delighted sigh entered his mouth from hers, Charlie feared he’d snap in two.
He pulled back, albeit reluctantly, to kiss the tip of her nose and forehead. “Better?”
A touch of pink had risen in her cheeks, but she smiled in return. “Yeah, much better.”
That contented smile was worth its weight in gold, and Charlie had to force his thundering heartbeat to settle down.
“Not hard to beat, though, if this is my comparison,” he stated, squinting at a different passage on the screen. “Also, I think he used the word ‘and,’ like… twelve, thirteen times? Jesus, take a breath, dude.”
Sam shrieked out a sudden laugh, slapping a hand over her mouth, as if she could pull back the volume. It was infectious, the way she immediately devolved into hysterics, grabbing her stomach to unsuccessfully fight the laughter off.
When he joined her, he felt as if the stress of the past few days melted away.
“I can’t breathe!” she squealed, wrenching a hand from her stomach and grabbing Charlie’s arm. “But good news! If I need inspiration, I know exactly where I should go if I want to describe someone’s dick!”
Charlie, in turn, choked on his own laugh. “Please, no, think of humanity. Don’t turn to this man.”
“No!” she insisted, her voice tight as she fought for a breath. “To a car dealership! That way I can see one of those waving inflatable things they have out front since that’s clearly how you describe an accurate dick according to this guy.”
That was the end of chatter for quite some time as the two flew into a complete fit of hysterics.