I look around, trying to picture myself here, not as a guest or someone passing through.
Just ... here.
“You’ll take the bed,” he says after a beat, nodding toward the hallway. “Scottie made sure your sheets and pillow are on it, but there are extra blankets in the closet if you want it.”
I blink. “Wait. What about you?”
“The couch is a pullout, and the guy at the home goods store promised me it could comfortably hold a bear.”
“Sean.”
“Kayla.” His voice is firm but warm. “In no universe could I let you sleep on a couch.”
I almost argue, but instead I smile. Maybe I shouldn’t admit this, but the truth is, this is how I’d hoped he’d treat me. Not like a visitor, but as someone too important to make sleep on his couch, all the same.
Yeah, I definitely shouldn’t admit that.
Especially because I’m apparently so selfish, it never occurred to me thathe’dbe the one sleeping on his couch.
“Thank you, Sean.” I glance around at his home and see evidence of things moved, shelves cleared, space made.
That space is for me.
“Thanks for everything,” I say. “This is a huge ask.”
“I know. I’m the one who asked.” One of his eyebrows shoots up, and it’s just teasing enough to lighten the moment. “Do you know what it’s like thinking I’m taking you off the market? I feel like the king of the world.”
I smile, and my finger traces my lips of its own accord. “Even if it’s … unconventional?” I say, because I can’t bring myself to say one of the other—truer—words that pop into my head: fake. Temporary. A big fat lie.
“I’m not picky,” he says. “I’ll take what I can get.”
He says it easily, like it doesn’t cost him anything.
But I’m starting to wonder what it’s going to cost me.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SEAN
Let me tell you something about emotional havoc.
Emotional havoc is brushing your teeth in the same bathroom with the most gorgeous woman you’ve ever known after she’s washed her face and you see her without makeup for the first time.
Emotional havoc is seeing her walk out of your bedroom—nowhers—in pajamas. A silky navy set with the buttons and short sleeves and short bottoms and crazy hotness.
Emotional havoc is sleeping twenty feet away from this woman … and wondering if you’re hearing the fan or hearing her breathe.
Emotional havoc is getting up in the middle of the night to use the restroom and wanting so badly to peek on her but knowing that would make you a creep of the highest order and you’ve never been a creep and you don’t even know who you are anymore because after seven hours in bed, you didn’t sleep a wink.
When my alarm goes off on my phone, I don’t even complain.
I’m relieved for this torture to end.
I set my workout clothes on a chair last night, so I slip into the bathroom to change, and then I walk over to the kitchen to make coffee.
Does she even drink coffee?
I’ve never seen her with anything except one of those water bottles. It looks a little like a Stanley, except the lettering on the handle is in a language I don’t recognize, and frankly, hers makes a Stanley look like a cheap dupe.
