When I opened the door to the hall, I wasn’t sure what I expected. I didn’t expect Dom to look just as attractive as a wet hallway rat as he had when he showed up, disheveled and haggard, last night. Then again, I couldn’t look much better.
All night, I’d repeated my single depressing mantra over and over, not sure if Dom was sincere enough to actually sit in the muggy, likely moldy hallway all night.
I would not cry.
I couldn’t even keep a promise to myself these days.
My self-pity was definitely eased a bit when I took in the man still sitting in the middle of my apartment’s first floor hallway. It was helping at the very least.
Dom looked like trash right now. Or at least as trashy as he could probably ever look.
Goddess, he was pretty for a ruggedly handsome sort of guy.
He was all sharp angles. Soft cheeks. Dark fluff of hair on top of his head, which must’ve been too large for him as a child …
Huffing, I set one hand on my hip. I raised my eyebrows until his dark eyes blinked themselves open from where he had passed out on the floor, slowly lifting himself up from the squishy puddle.
“Don’t worry; you didn’t wet yourself. Unless you showed up here drunk last night as well as stupid,” I said dryly. “That would explain a lot.”
Dom scanned over my bare feet that led up my bare, freckled knees. The only thing covering me was a faded, oversize T-shirt. I hadn’t thought to grab anything else. For the past however many months, I hadn’t needed to. I came home in my work clothes, went to bed, and got back up to put on some more constrictive yet fashionable clothing the next day. Half the time, I didn’t wear anything to bed.
Still, I crossed my arms over one another and my chest. Dom’s eyes eventually settled on the space bunched between my forearms before finally arriving at my face.
He didn’t look pleased at whatever he saw—or maybe it was from the marsh floor he had sat on. The carpet squelched under his previously dry boots. His lips curled at the sound.
When he saw me still standing by the open door, however, he looked over my shoulder, eyes flashing. “Am I allowed to come back inside now?”
I licked my lips. Honestly, the thought beyond opening the door to see if he was still there was about as far as I got in my head beyond the usual insomnia jarring me out of sleep every fifteen minutes.
I shrugged. He did look pitiful, still trying to piece together why the floor was soaked. “Are you done yelling at me like I’m a child?”
He pressed his lips together, and I could tell it took all his effort not to roll his eyes. Dom took a deep breath and nodded with a single dip of his chin.
“Okay then, fine.” I stepped aside, letting him move toward me. “Don’t say I’m not kind now.”
There were still plenty of other things he could and did call me.
“Do you have an extra towel or something?” Dom asked, his voice bristling with exhaustion more than irritation. “I’m soaked. What is going on out there? I didn’t think the rain was bad enough to cause a monsoon in the hallway.”
“It happens sometimes,” I said simply.
“Why do you still live here?”
I’d been asking myself that question a lot recently.
Turning around, I walked farther inside, toward the closet that housed my linens and a variety of winter sweaters I couldn’t fit anywhere else. I heard the door close behind me as well as the click of the lock, sealing us in. I pulled out an average towel from the middle rack—Dom didn’t deserve a fancy guest towel—and handed it over.
He looked down at the blue color of it before nodding. “Thanks.”
I nodded again as I turned away to shut the closet door and give him a moment, suddenly quiet. I wasn’t that big of a bitch. I wasn’t going to let him sit in the gross wet hallway, but now, when I glanced back across the studio, Dom was slowly shedding his clothing.
“What are you doing?”
He paused at my voice. The question came out a lot shriller than intended. It didn’t seem to dissuade him as he continued to disrobe. “Getting dry.”
He took off his shirt that he’d unbuttoned. Underneath, he had on a thin black T-shirt, capped around his shoulders to show off one of the first things I’d ever noticed about him.
Sure, the first thing I’d noticed when he was in Bar was that I’d never seen him before. The eventual second was the thick sleeve of tattoos spiraling down his left arm.
