CHAPTER TWO #2
"Are you sure you don't want me to get out of your hair?" I asked, aiming for breezy “I can drag Toya out of bed. We'll disappear, and you can go back to being whatever you are."
His lips twitched at the corner—just barely. For a heartbeat I thought he'd let it ride, keep things easy and surface-level, but then something shifted in his face. The careful, composed thing he'd been wearing all morning just fell away.
"I think I might like it if you stay with me. Forever."
"Oh... wow." I managed a half-smile, buying time. "Didn't know real men actually said things like that out loud."
"As opposed to?" His voice was easy, unhurried, but his eyes didn't move off mine.
Monster mate smut, I thought. Any fictional man worth remembering. My brain supplied this helpfully, like a footnote.
I smiled while something warm and traitorous turned over in my chest. Then I turned and shuffled toward the bathroom before I did something truly stupid like believe him.
PEOPLE LIKE TO SAY forever is built brick by brick, each year mortared neatly to the last until you have something solid enough to weather any storm, a house of years with strong foundations and clean lines.
For me, it took one day.
One day to feel the weight of a promise I never asked for.
That morning, I thought I’d brush my teeth, choke down whatever food he put in front of me, and find the fastest way back to my apartment with Latoya in tow.
Instead, I stayed. I stayed because he made it easy, and my gut was telling me that whatever this was, go with it.
I had never been steered wrong by intuition before, I wasn’t going to ignore it now.
I still attempted, and failed, to wake my best friend from the trenches of her hangover slumber, but Ethan assured me it was okay to let her sleep. He'd brought me clothes, too. Not the cocktail dress he promised I had changed out of myself, which was now being laundered by him, my gracious host.
In the meantime, I got to dress in a pair of soft gym shorts and a loose linen shirt that hung off one shoulder when I pulled it on.
The shorts were way too long, so I rolled them a few times.
The shirt I didn’t mind even if the outfit as a whole made me look like a teenager playing dress-up in her father's closet.
I didn't care. I was clean, fed, and my teeth no longer felt like they'd grown fur overnight. Now I’d settled comfortably in his kitchen and was nosily taking it all in.
"So, you know Mehgan's fiancé?"
"Troy? Yeah." He leaned against the counter; a coffee mug held loose in one hand. "We went to school together."
“College?” I asked.
“Nah. That took us two different directions. I studied law.”
I eyed him. “You’re a lawyer?”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
"I'm not surprised," I replied, though I was. Not about the law degree, I could buy that. It was the rest of him. The forearms, the ink, and the way he carried himself like someone who'd never needed a business card to open a door. "It's just, no lawyers I know look like you."
He grinned, slow and amused. "Know a lot of those?"
"Might be surprised,” I replied lightly.
"Try me."
I considered him over the edge of the water glass he’d given me. The truth was, I did know lawyers, and not just because my current building had three. The one on the fifth floor wore a mustard cardigan and talked about his cats' birthdays in the elevator.
The woman on twelve had a perm that could stop traffic and a severe case of resting bitch face.
None of them looked like they'd stepped off a magazine cover.
"More than a few," I answered simply, because it was easier than admitting I’d been mentally undressing a man who'd put me in his guest room and fed me.
He didn't push, just watched me with a steady gaze, the kind that made my skin prickle.
"Are you familiar with the name Marcelli?"
The question came out casually. The way someone might ask if I knew a good coffee shop in the neighborhood. And I did know that name. I knew it well, actually, but I had never associated it with any specific person, and I didn’t want to reveal I was aware of his family tree quite yet.
Then I would have to reveal mine and the two had intersected long before the two of us had.
It made me even more intrigued about this man, and a fraction more comfortable. He wasn’t a total stranger to the world I grew up in or around.
That put him on a completely different level than the man I’d drag into my bed. Although, technically, taken me into his.
I took a slow sip of water. The glass was cool against my palm, condensation beading where my fingers pressed.
"Should I be familiar with it?"
He smiled at me, those dimples appearing again. "Some people are."
I laughed softly. “Maybe I’m not some people.”
He studied me for a moment, the smile lingering at the corner of his mouth like he was deciding whether to believe me. Then he set his mug down on the counter and straightened.
"What do you want to do today, Julia?"
I blinked. "You're the one who asked me to spend the day with you," I pointed out, leaning back against the island behind me. "I never agreed to anything. I just haven't left yet. There's a difference."
"Is there?"
"Absolutely. One is an invitation. The other is a hostage situation with good bedside manners."
That earned me the dimples again. Full this time, both cheeks, and God help me, I felt that response everywhere.
"Fair enough." He crossed his arms, the linen of his shirt pulling tight across his shoulders. "Consider it an invitation, then. What would you like to do?"
I opened my mouth—to deflect, make some joke about going home and nursing my dignity, but his gaze dropped before I could get a word out.
Down past my face, past the linen shirt hanging off one shoulder, past the rolled waistband of his gym shorts pooling at my hips, all the way to my bare feet and polished toes.
His brows drew together, just slightly. "Are your regular shoes a six and a half too?"
The question was so unexpected and out of sequence with anything we'd been circling, that I laughed.
"What?"
"Your shoes." He gestured vaguely toward the hallway, where my heels were probably still lying where I'd kicked them off. "I need to know what size you are."
Well, wasn’t he racking up the brownie points? I appreciated a man who'd already thought three steps ahead and was now politely asking for the information he needed to execute.
I pressed my lips together and looked down at my own feet, as if they might tell me something I didn't already know. My toenails were painted a dark burgundy, and his floor was so clean under them, I could see the faint reflection of my own skin.
"They are the same," I answered. Then, because I couldn't help myself: "Why? Are you planning to Cinderella me?"
He didn’t reply, but his boyish grin told me that he'd been planning exactly that and didn't mind being caught.