Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
Lottie
Morning people genuinely baffle me. I don’t trust anyone who wakes up cheerful before nine a.m. No mentally stable person opens their eyes at sunrise and thinks, what a beautiful day to be alive.
Absolutely not. Mornings are cruel. They require consciousness and responsibility and things like emails and functioning social skills, all before my brain has even fully come online.
And this morning feels particularly violent.
My head pounds the second I start waking up, my mouth dry enough to qualify as a medical condition, my body slow and heavy as blurry memories from last night drift slowly into focus.
There was a lot of wine. Wes shirtless in the kitchen.
Oh God. I groan softly into my pillow, except the pillow isn’t a pillow.
It’s suspiciously hard and warm…and breathing.
My eyes snap open instantly. For one horrifying second, my heart stops beating as I stare blearily at the smooth, bronzed skin and the hard line of muscle resting beneath my hand.
Then memories crashes back all at once. Wes and I in the kitchen drinking an obscene amount of wine.
Flashes of our confessions. Wes’s mouth on my wrist. And, oh Lord, the flirting.
The first thought that stumbles through my pounding brain is, midnight therapy wine was a catastrophic mistake.
I stay completely still for one long second, trying to assess the situation without panicking, but I am aggressively hungover; the kind of hangover where my own heartbeat sounds like a construction site inside my skull.
I swallow slowly, my dry mouth somehow getting worse as I tilt my head up just enough to look at him.
Wes appears to still be asleep, which I’d be thankful for if it wasn’t for the fact that one of my legs is tangled with his.
Warm skin presses against my cheek, solid muscle rising and falling steadily beneath me while one of his heavy arms is draped low around my waist.
How the hell did I get here?
Morning light cuts across his face through the windows, catching against dark lashes and messy hair, the sharp line of his jaw softened slightly by sleep. He looks younger like this, less intimidating and less controlled. But still devastatingly attractive.
Very, very carefully, I glance down beneath the sheet tangled around my body, and I thank God because I’m wearing clothes.
An oversized gray T-shirt—very soft and very obviously not mine—hangs off one shoulder, and underneath it I’m still wearing my thong, which feels moderately reassuring.
Slightly less reassuring is the fact that the shirt smells exactly like Wes.
Pine and clean soap and cedar and pure masculinity.
Slowly and cautiously, I turn my head toward him.
He has one arm bent underneath his pillow, the sheet sitting low on his hips, revealing entirely too much bare chest and muscle. Or not quite enough, depending on how you look at it. I can’t tell what he’s wearing beneath the sheet.
My heart thuds harder as I try desperately to piece together last night.
The last thing I remember clearly is the two of us drinking in the kitchen long past a reasonable hour.
Scout was asleep on the floor while Wes sat next to me at the bar.
And somewhere between the teasing and the honesty, the mood in the room shifted.
The flirting stopped feeling harmless, and the way he looked at me had every nerve ending in my body firing.
When his hand wrapped gently around my wrist and his teeth grazed my skin, it almost made me dizzy.
It was ridiculously hot. The kind of hot that short-circuits all rational thought and replaces it with pure physical awareness. I remember the way my entire body reacted. After that everything gets blurry and I can remember absolutely nothing.
Panic flares immediately. Did we have sex?
No, surely not. I sit up way too quickly, instantly regretting it when the room tilts violently around me.
“Oh my God,” I whisper, pressing my fingers to my forehead as I squeeze my eyes shut against the spinning.
Midnight therapy wine is officially banned for the rest of my life.
When the dizziness finally settles, I look down at myself again, trying to get the faded logo to come into focus. Cove Aviation. My stomach drops.
I am wearing Wes Winters’s shirt. I am in Wes Winters’s bed.
And Wes Winters is… please tell me he isn’t naked under that sheet.
I need to leave, preferably before either of us has to acknowledge whatever terrible alcohol-fuelled decisions led us here.
Carefully, very carefully, I start to untangle my legs from his beneath the sheets, moving one inch at a time like I’m trying to diffuse a bomb.
Every tiny movement makes my pulse jump harder.
The mattress shifts slightly beneath me as I brace one trembling hand against it, trying to slide backward without waking him.
This is fine, totally normal. Just waking up tangled around my fake husband, no big deal.
I manage to free one leg and then the other.
Hope sparks briefly in my chest. I think I’m actually going to make it out.
I slowly lift his heavy arm from around my waist, holding my breath while my heart practically beats itself out of my body.
I’m almost free when a low groan sounds behind me as the mattress shifts. I freeze instantly, every muscle in my body locking up while dread floods my bloodstream. Please go back to sleep, you devastatingly attractive specimen of a man.
For one very long second, there’s only silence in the bed behind me. I can practically feel him waking up, piecing this together, probably remembering every humiliating thing I said and did last night while I sit here in his shirt like a complete disaster.
I am never going to recover from this.
Then his rough, sleepy voice rumbles out behind me, warm with amusement and entirely too smug.
“Don’t even think about going anywhere.”