He’s right. I had the best sleep of my life last night. The way his bed enveloped me as if it were specifically made for me was…ugh, it was euphoric. I want to go crawl back into it as we speak.
“I thought you said you didn’t have another bedroom.”
“Correction: I said I don’t have anotherbed. I have two other rooms.”
“Two?!”
I sound ridiculous right now. I know that, and judging by the smirk on Gavin’s face, he knows that too. I’m just trying to wrap my head around how we went from having breakfast to him asking me to move in.
“I had a rookie staying with me when I first joined the team, but he’s moved on to bigger and better things, so one room is practically empty, and the other holds my hockey stuff. You can take your pick on which one you want.”
I nod, remembering back when Reed first started in the NHL and lived with one of his older teammates for the first year. I always thought that was such a selfless act, giving up part of your home to help someone else.
Kind of like what Gavin is attempting to do now. I know he’s just trying to be a nice guy. He can say he’s only offering because it benefits him, but I know better. He’d have easily found someone else to take care of his fish. He’s just being kind.Tookind, and I can’t take advantage of that…can I?
It would be wrong on so many levels, but it would also solve so many of my problems. While Reed has been nice enough over the last few weeks, he hasn’t completely hidden his desire for me to move out. And I get it. I truly do. It’s part of what makes this offer so tempting.
Well, that and the fact that I am having no luck finding a place on my own. The baby is here. My time is up. Should I really be looking a gift horse in the mouth?
“Look, I fully understand your reservations, Nessa,” Gavin says when I don’t say anything. “They’re valid. But I swear it has nothing to do with New York. This is just two friends helping each other out. That’s all.”
It was nothing. Just a night of fun. It didn’t mean anything.
There are those words again. Maybe itwasnothing. Maybe itwasjust a night of fun. Maybe itdidn’tmean anything. Then what happened just thirty minutes ago? When he pressed against me and I felt just howunfriendly he was feeling toward me? Was it a slip-up? A total accident? Something that will certainly never happen again?
I don’t know the answer to any of those questions, and more than that, I don’t think I want to. Because he’s right, thisisjust friends helping each other out, and I could really use a tick in the win column.
I exhale slowly, then nod. “All right. I’ll stay here and help you with your fish—but only until I find something else. I won’t take advantage of you any more than that.”
“Oh, love,” he says with a grin. “I wouldn’t mind at all if you took advantage of me.”
He’s teasing. I know he is, but all it does is remind me of what a bad idea this is. Even so, I don’t take back what I just said. Instead, I extend my hand over the counter. Gavin does the same, his palm sliding against mine.
Just friends, just friends, just friends, I chant to myself.
“Welcome aboard, roomie.”
He smiles, and I smile back.
But on the inside? I know this man could be my downfall, and that scares me for more reasons than one.
CHAPTER 12
LOCKE
“Oh, Gavin,” my mother says, her voice echoing around my SUV. She sighs, and I feel it deep in my bones. “What have you gotten yourself into?”
Sure, it’s probably pathetic that I am an almost forty-year-old man and have called my parents to talk about my woes, but one thing they drilled into me from the time I was little was to talk about my feelings. So here I am, talking about them and wondering if I made a mistake by letting my one-night stand move in with me.
I don’t have an answer to my mom’s question because I’ve been asking myself the same thing since this morning, when Nessa sat across from me, looking sad about her apartment applications getting rejected, and I opened my mouth without thinking, offering her one of my spare rooms. It was such a moronic idea, and it was built on such a flimsy reason. I know that, and I’m sure she did too.
But I couldn’t let her beat herself up over her situation any longer. She came all this way to start over, and if I can help in any way, I want to. She deserves it, especially after everything she’s been through. Nessa is not a pathetic divorcee. She issomeone who was hurt in one of the worst ways possible. So yeah, I’m going to offer her a room, even if it is the dumbest idea of the century.
I thought I was doing a nice thing by washing her clothes, but I quickly realized what a mistake it was when she walked out of my room in nothing but my old Seattle Serpents t-shirt. It took every ounce of strength I had not to march across that room and haul her into my arms and kiss her senseless.
Somehow, I resisted…until she crawled up on that counter. I couldn’t help myself. Ihadto touch her. And help her, of course.
Yeah, right, you fucking perv. You just wanted to feel her against you again.
