15. Zoey
Zoey
Morning arrived slowly.
Awareness came back in layers. First the warmth, then the faint sound of Markie shifting somewhere in the apartment, then the quiet hum of the refrigerator down the hall.
Then the very immediate realization that I was not alone.
I opened my eyes.
For a moment, I didn’t move. I just stayed there, taking inventory.
A large arm rested across my back, heavy and relaxed. One of my legs was thrown over his hip. My face was pressed into the center of Liam’s chest, and I could hear the steady rhythm of his heartbeat beneath my ear.
Right.
Memory returned in a sequence that felt almost rude in its clarity.
The couch. The ice cream. The stupid reality show. The moment when everything tilted and never tilted back.
My stomach tightened.
I raised my head and looked at Liam. He was still asleep.
Up close, he looked younger. Not softer, but unguarded in a way he didn’t show when he was awake. His hair was a mess from my hands.
He had one hand spread across the middle of my back. The other rested loosely against my hip, fingers curved into my skin.
At some point during the night, I had migrated fully on top of him.
Excellent.
Outstanding decision making, Zoey.
I stayed still for another second, staring at the scar just below his collarbone. I had traced it last night.
I remembered telling him I wanted to make someone pay for it.
Which, in hindsight, was possibly a little intense.
My brain started running again.
That was the problem.
For the past two days it had been quieter than usual. My constant mental checklist had eased up, as had the running tally of everything I was responsible for.
Work tickets. Customer escalations. My mother’s increasing chaos. The constant sense that if I stopped paying attention for five seconds something in my life would catch fire. With Liam around, that had all faded to the background, and I barely heard the noise.
He checked things, and it wasn’t annoying when he did it. He noticed details and fixed problems before they became disasters. He paid attention to things I usually had to monitor myself.
I hadn’t realized how exhausting that constant vigilance was until someone else started carrying some of it without asking.
It explained why kissing him had felt less like a reckless decision, and more like the inevitable result of several days of my nervous system quietly surrendering to the concept of not being the only adult in the room.
I shifted slightly against him, and his arm tightened automatically, which made something uncomfortable happen inside my chest.
Fucking fantastic.
Attachment.
My favorite.
I closed my eyes briefly.
You absolute stupid bitch.
The words arrived with that casual cruelty my brain had perfected over the years.
You moved to a new town two minutes ago and immediately climbed into bed with the first extremely competent mountain man who offered you terrible breakfast.
Incredible strategy.
I pressed my forehead against his chest.
This was exactly how women ended up ruining their lives.
They relaxed for five minutes, allowed someone to take care of them for a day or two.
That, in turn, led to their brains being flooded with extremely stupid hormones and feelings about safety and stability, then suddenly they were rearranging their entire emotional infrastructure around a man who probably just thought this was a pleasant detour.
My throat tightened. I hated that feeling. The stupid fragile one that lived right under my ribs and always appeared when something good happened. My brain immediately started calculating how long it would take before it disappeared.
Because it always did.
I lay there another moment, very still.
Liam’s hand moved absently over my back before settling on my waist again. The quiet steadiness of that movement made something in my chest hurt.
I stared at the wall.
Why was my life so fucked?
I exhaled slowly and dropped my face back against Liam’s chest. Apparently my coping strategy this morning was going to involve pretending I was still asleep on top of a man who made my brain stop screaming for five consecutive minutes.
Which, frankly, was ridiculous enough on its own.
But I stayed there, listening to the steady rhythm of his heart and breathing in his scent. If I stayed here, I could pretend this was a completely normal way to start the day.
“brEAKFAST.”
Markie’s timing was impressive.
I stared at the wall for another moment.
Right, gotta feed the parrot.
I slid carefully off Liam, inch by inch, moving with the slow precision of someone attempting to exit a high stakes crime scene without leaving evidence.
He didn’t stir. The man had the sleep instincts of a tranquilized bear.
He was sprawled across my mattress with the relaxed confidence of a man who had clearly decided my bed was structurally sound enough to support him, one arm still stretched across the space where I had been a moment ago.
His hair was a disaster, but his face looked calm in a way that felt deeply unfair.
He had no right to look that peaceful after what we did last night.
“brEAKFAST!” Markie screeched.
“Yes,” I whispered sharply toward the doorway. “I heard you.”
I grabbed a pair of panties out of my dresser and pulled them on before I slipped out of my bedroom.
When Markie saw me, he slammed his beak against the bars, then leaned forward, his posture suggesting he had been conducting a detailed overnight surveillance operation.
He tilted his head and looked at me, then peered in the direction of the bedroom.
The bird had the expression of someone holding classified information.
“Do not,” I said immediately.
He leaned farther forward. “DOG!”
“Stop calling him that.”
“DOG!”
I opened the cabinet and grabbed his food container. “This is none of your business.”
Markie watched me scoop pellets into his dish, his head tilted in the other direction. He looked pleased with himself.
I situated the bowl where he liked it.
Markie climbed down immediately and began eating with focused determination.
I leaned one shoulder against the counter and watched him. “You don’t understand the situation.”
“GUEST.”
“Yes.”
“DOG.”
“No.”
“GUEST DOG.”
“That is not helpful.”
He returned to his food with great enthusiasm.
I rubbed my face. “This may have been a mistake.”
Markie chewed.
“This may have been a huge mistake.”
Crunch.
“I just moved here.”
Crunch.
“I have been in this town for approximately ten minutes.”
Crunch.
“And I’m already sleeping with the first extremely competent mountain man who takes care of me and fixes plumbing.”
Markie looked up. “GOOD PLUMBING.”
I closed my eyes. “This is not a healthy dynamic.”
“GOOD DOG.”
“I’m not keeping him.”
Markie continued eating.
Sighing, I pushed away from the counter. “Finish your breakfast.”
“brEAKFAST.”
“Yes. Eat your breakfast.”
His head lifted slowly, then he tilted it toward the bedroom. “OOOH.”
I froze, then very slowly turned my head toward my asshole bird. “You didn’t just do that.”
Markie puffed slightly. “OOOH.”
I pointed a finger at him. “Mind. Your. Business.”
He leaned closer to the bowl and took another bite, then he raised his head again.
I walked to my desk and opened my laptop. The machine took approximately two seconds to wake up, then the notifications poured in.
Slack exploded across the screen. Messages stacked instantly. Ticket alerts. Customer escalation flags. Internal threads.
Someone had already tagged me three times in the span of ten minutes.
I stared at the screen as my brain tried to boot up fully.
It made a sound somewhere between a groan and a prayer.
“Oh my god.”
Another Slack ping.
Then another.
And another.
My shoulders sagged.
The peace that had enveloped me upon waking vanished immediately as the full weight of my normal operating system slammed back into place.
I closed the laptop.
No. Absolutely not. Not until coffee.
I pushed away from the desk and walked into the kitchen.
Water first. Then coffee. Then whatever counted as breakfast in a household that had clearly prioritized ice cream over responsible grocery shopping.
I opened the cabinet and stared inside. Protein bars. Peanut butter. Half a bag of questionable granola.
Good enough.
Behind me, from the bedroom, I heard the groan of my bedframe.
I reached for the coffee grinder and poured in a scoop of beans. The machine rattled loudly against the counter while I leaned my hip against the cabinet and waited. Markie crunched through his breakfast with impressive commitment.
When the grinder finally stopped, I dumped the grounds into the filter and filled the kettle at the sink.
The apartment stayed quiet except for the sound of water and Markie chewing.
I poured the water into the machine, pressed the button, and stood there for a moment watching the first drops fall into the pot.
Progress.
A few minutes later, I filled a mug and took a long sip, staring into the cabinet while my brain attempted to reassemble itself into a functioning adult.
My brain had just reached the stage of consciousness where it was considering the possibility of cooperating when footsteps sounded behind me.
I turned.
Liam stood in the doorway to the kitchen, fully dressed. Jeans. Boots.
Shirt. His gaze moved over me slowly.
And that was when I realized I was standing in my kitchen in nothing but black panties, holding a mug of coffee.
I looked down at myself, then back at him as I took another sip of coffee.
Well.
There were two options.
Option one: panic and sprint out of the room.
Option two: behave like a woman who had very recently climbed this man like a tree and therefore had nothing left to prove.
Shrugging internally, I chose option two.
I leaned one hip against the counter and took another drink. “It’s morning.”
He was still looking at me, but not in the crude way I had come to expect from men who suddenly found themselves confronted with unexpected skin.