20. Finn
FINN
S ince when did a king-size seem so small? I stared at the bed in the middle of the sprawling room, wondering if I was being punked.
“Right or left?” Sierra asked.
“Huh?”
“Which side do you?—”
“Right,” I said.
“Good.” She schlepped across the room with her work bag. “If a bad guy breaks in, he’s getting you first.”
Maybe her words were meant to ease the tension, but nothing short of a grenade going off in the room could have distracted me from the realization that we would be sharing that bed.
Sure, we’d been living together for well over a month now, but we had separate bedrooms, our own bathrooms, and plenty of other rooms to hang out in while staying out of each other’s way .
The kitchen was the only space we truly shared, and with us clocking so many hours at the studio, we weren’t using our kitchen much, anyway. This was a completely different scenario. I tugged at my collar, which felt tight enough to strangle me.
I couldn’t do this. Not if I hoped to maintain any shred of dignity. There was no way I could sleep next to her and risk making a fool of myself.
“I’ll have someone bring up a spare blanket,” I said, coming to my senses.
“For what?” Sierra asked.
“I’ll take the floor.”
She gave an exhausted laugh, rubbing her face with both hands. “I appreciate the chivalry, but if you’re that desperate to get away from me, there’s a couch in the front room.”
“I’m not desperate to get away from you,” I said, trying to gauge if she was really as blasé about this as she was acting. Was that a flush in her cheeks? Or was that just from rubbing her face?
She bit her bottom lip, and I remembered how sweet her lips had tasted against mine that day in my studio. How warm…how soft…I wanted to taste her again. But what did she want? Did she think about that moment the way I did?
Sierra blinked at me, her face unreadable. “Well, you don’t have to sleep on the couch for my sake. The bed is plenty big enough. No use in us being uncomfortable when we have all that space. I think the two of us will be exhausted enough to pass out as soon as we lie down.”
It was hard to argue with that. “I appreciate you not making a big deal out of the room thing. ”
She lifted her shoulder. “Just more of that compromise.”
“Right,” I said, a strange feeling settling in my chest. This was all for Every Day . For the optics. For the press and publicity and attention we needed to pull off Jillian’s PR campaign.
Nothing more. I couldn’t afford for our fake engagement to be something more. Something real. Because real only led to mess.
“The real question I have is who would have been getting the suite if we hadn’t been sharing?” Sierra said, her tone teasing again. “And consider your answer wisely. Couples have broken up for less.”
I smirked. “You, of course.”
She nodded approvingly. “You’re going to make such a good husband.”
That pressure in my chest throbbed, and I tore my gaze away from her, my eyes landing on the room service menu on the dresser. I snatched it up and handed it to her. “Pick something. You haven’t eaten dinner yet.”
“Neither have you.”
“I already know my order.” I had the same salmon rice bowl every time I stayed here.
“Isn’t it too late for food?” she wondered.
“Not for us,” I said.
Her eyebrow rose to a delicate point, her auburn hair slipping free of her clip, spiraling around her face in soft waves. I wanted to curl those waves around my fingers. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means it’s been a grueling day, tomorrow is going to be just as bad, and you need fuel to power you through it. So tell me what you want, and I will make it happen. ”
Just like I’d made the fabric order happen. There was something about Sierra that made me want to spend all my time making her wishes come true. Maybe she was Cinderella, and I was her goddamn fairy godmother.
She yawned as she scanned the menu. “My brain’s too tired to pick. Oh, wait! Mac-n-cheese.”
I grinned at the way her eyes lit up. “Mac-n-cheese it is.” I picked up the room phone and dialed down to the front desk, giving them our orders.
Less than twenty minutes later, a knock sounded at the door.
“That was fast,” Sierra said, rushing to answer it, clearly hungrier than she was letting on. I followed her to the door, finding not only a dining cart but also the bag with the clothes and toiletries I’d requested Brenna track down earlier.
“What’s all that?” Sierra asked as I plopped it down on the bed.
“I had Brenna gather the essentials from the condo when she stopped by to feed Lord Meowington.”
“Oh, thank God!” Sierra said, unzipping the bag to find the pair of sweats she liked to wear as pajamas. “I love that woman! She needs a raise.”
“I pay her very well,” I assured her, collecting my own things from the bag.
“Pay her more,” Sierra said, hugging the sweats to her chest. “For these. And for dealing with your grumpy cat.”
“He’s not grumpy.”
“He takes after his father. ”
I rolled my eyes but understood her reaction to the simple home comforts.
I certainly had no desire to sleep in my suit.
I checked my watch. The fabric could be expected anytime.
Was there even a point in going to sleep?
We’d have to get up again frustratingly soon.
But I supposed even an hour of rest was better than nothing.
Sierra poked around at the dining cart while I shrugged out of my jacket and tossed it over the back of a chair. “Umm…”
“What’s wrong?” I turned around to find her standing behind two steaming plates of macaroni.
“I think they forgot the salmon.”
I swallowed down my groan. If I’d had the energy to be more frustrated, I would have called down to the front desk and lectured them at great length on the incompetence of not being able to take a simple order, but the truth was, I didn’t have the energy for that.
“Will you survive without all your omega-3 fatty acids?” she asked.
“Unlikely,” I quipped. “Especially if Shaw keeps throwing costumes into the washer.”
“She felt awful about it,” Sierra said.
“I know. I thought she was going to have a breakdown, and that’s the last thing I need.” Seeing Shaw crouched down by the washer in tears, I’d had momentary flashbacks to my mother—younger, distraught, inconsolable.
And that was perhaps why I hadn’t completely lost my temper in the moment. Even though the image had been like stepping back into the past, one thing that past-me and present-me had in common was the ability to jump straight into damage control mode.
“I’m sure she’ll be fine by the time she shows up to set today,” Sierra said. “I think it was just a shock. ”
“To all of us.” I picked up my fork and sampled a bite of the pasta.
“Well?” Sierra asked, already on her third bite.
“It’s not…horrible.”
She smirked. “That’s what you get for trying to be all healthy in the middle of the night. Sometimes the universe knows you need some good old-fashioned comfort food.”
“Real comfort food would have been grilled cheese and tomato soup,” I said. Sierra tilted her head, clearly waiting for me to explain.
“Growing up, my younger brother Connor did a lot of the cooking. Grilled cheese was the first thing he mastered. So we had a lot of grilled cheese.”
I cleared my throat, plowing on before she could ask questions about that. “Anyway, I should have ordered us both salmon to combat all the RevX you drink.”
She hummed, half-amused. “I think I overdid it tonight. Feels like my blood is buzzing.”
“I’m going to wean you off of those,” I said seriously.
She smirked. “You can pry RevX from my cold, dead hands.”
I snorted. “I’d prefer not. Death by energy drink is not a story I want to have to sell to the tabloids.”
“Yeah, I suppose that would kind of put a damper on the whole fiancée thing,” she said, finishing her plate.
“Might garner some sympathy, though,” I said. “Give Every Day an extra competitive boost. I’d be sure to shed one very cinematic tear at your graveside.”
Sierra’s lips twisted. “Guess I’ll keep drinking them. ”
I held her gaze, and her smile widened until she laughed, the sound beautiful and soft, before turning away. She really had no idea what she did to me sometimes. She stood and set her dishes back on the cart. “We should try to get some sleep, huh?”
“Yeah. My phone’s on full volume, so the moment the notification pops up that the fabric is here, we’ll know.”
She nodded, picking up her pajamas and slipping into the bathroom to change. I finished my own meal, then stood to add my dishes to the cart. I noticed Sierra had left the bathroom door open a crack.
It was just enough that I could spy her reflection in the mirror…A strip of bare skin…A shoulder…Those wavy auburn locks…I twisted away, fighting the urge to turn back and look.
I’d been plagued with enough desperate dreams since kissing her, not to mention since hearing about her damn sex dreams. I didn’t need to give myself more reasons for her to occupy my thoughts.
When she emerged from the bathroom wearing an oversized Missouri-Kansas State university tee, we swapped places, but as I went to close the bathroom door, something halted me.
Had she left the door open on purpose? Had she wanted me to look?
Just in case she had, I left the door open as well, an invitation to look as I shrugged out of my clothes, replacing them with the pajamas Brenna had packed.
Maybe I was imagining things.
Maybe Sierra was making me lose my mind.
But I was confident her cheeks were red when I emerged.
“Ringer on?” she confirmed, sliding in on her side of the bed while I flipped the covers back on my side .
“Yep,” I said. There was a canyon of space between us as I laid down. All I wanted was to reach for her. To see if she would curl into me. “Good to turn the lights off?”
She nodded and I did, thrusting us into darkness.
I sighed, but instead of the relief I thought I’d find, that coiling tension only tightened around me.
I was acutely aware of every shift of the covers, every inhale she made, the way her moisturizer smelled, the way her body turned against the mattress.
These thoughts were going to smother me.
And then Sierra laughed, that gorgeous sound cutting through the dark.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Just thinking that we’ve done this kind of backward—sharing a bed for the first time after we’ve been living together for a month. That’s not how it’s supposed to go.”
“Who says how it’s supposed to go?”
The covers rustled as if she’d shrugged. “Beats me. It’s not like I have much experience with this kind of thing. I’ve never actually lived with a guy before.”
I hummed in response. “I did the whole moving-in-together thing once,” I admitted. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
“What happened?” Sierra said softly after a beat. The bed shifted, the blankets pulling, and I could tell she’d rolled toward me.
A mess was what happened.
“Her name was Layla,” I said. It was easier talking about her…easier to remember it all while I was shrouded in darkness.
“We were college sweethearts. You know, the whole cliché. When I was twenty-four, she got an amazing opportunity in New York for an eight-month artist mentorship. I told her to go chase her dreams and that I’d be waiting for her when she was done.
It never crossed my mind that she wouldn’t be waiting for me . ”
“Oh no…” Sierra said.
“Oh yes,” I confirmed. “When I showed up to her art show to surprise her, I found her with her new boyfriend. So, I flew home alone to pack up our place.”
“Finn, I’m…I’m so sorry,” she said, shifting again until her hand found mine beneath the covers.
When was the last time someone had held my hand like this?
I never had any trouble finding a woman to take to bed when I needed that itch scratched, but this kind of simple affection was something I’d gone without for a very long time.
It was such a little thing…but the gesture was so sweet, it made my eyes sting.
“You deserved better than that,” she said.
“I should have known better,” I told her. “The signs were all there. Layla called less and less, and every time I did get a hold of her, she had less to say.”
“Then she should have broken up with you instead of lying and cheating.”
True enough. The end of the relationship would have hurt either way, but the lying had just made it sting all the more, making me realize what a fool I’d been to open myself up to that kind of pain.
“It’s all in the past now,” I said. “I guess I just meant to tell you that living together is all well and good until you have to put their crap in boxes and ship it to the other side of the country.”
“That’s fair,” Sierra said thoughtfully. “I suppose I should count myself lucky that I never had to do that with Trey. He pulled the plug before he started keeping anything more than a toothbrush and some hair gel at my place.”
I couldn’t help thinking about all the stuff Sierra already had at my place. About having to put all that in boxes when this was all over. Did I want that?
She yawned in the darkness, squeezing my hand once more before releasing it. “Goodnight, Finn.”
“Night,” I said. But as I closed my eyes, trying to find sleep, I couldn’t stop thinking of how close she was, how easy it would be to reach out and touch…
feel her soft skin, the warmth of her body, those tempting curves.
I imagined us pressed together, hearing desperate sounds spill from her lips as I unraveled her.
But I didn’t just want sex with her. I wanted…I wanted to hold her hand. I wanted to make her laugh. I wanted to be the person she trusted with her secrets, with her fears, with her future.
And that was scary as hell.
Serious relationships like the kind I’d had with Layla…
that was something I just didn’t do anymore.
I’d had enough firsthand experience to know how that would end.
All I had to do was look at my mother post my dad ditching or Connor’s hellish divorce to know wanting a deep and real relationship with Sierra would be a recipe for disaster.
I’d learned better than to risk my heart like that.