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Curtis: And just FYI, the video made me extremely happy as well. And not just because of the nip-slip.
I don’t really know how to respond to any of that. I snuggle under my covers, and when I roll on my side, my head on the pillow, my eyes close as the light smell of his cologne immediately fills my senses. My heart beats inside my chest as memories of what we did early this morning flash through my mind. His head resting right where mine is right now, with me on top of him as he gripped my hips and looked up at me as if I was the most gorgeous creature he’d ever laid eyes on. His head resting here later, when I’d fallen asleep with him wrapped around me like he’d never let go.
I close my eyes, feeling myself start to drift off, twitching awake enough to see his text.
Curtis: You there?
But my eyes are too heavy to allow me to respond. I’d barely gotten three hours of sleep this morning before I ran and hid in Jackson Square all day.
I let out a grumpy huff when my phone starts to vibrate over and over, and I peek through one blurry eye so I can aim for the red Deny button. But my finger-to-one-eye coordination must be way off, because next thing I know, a swimmy image of Curtis’s handsome face fills my screen, making me sit my head up and blink several times until I can see him clearly.
“You FaceTimed me?” I ask stupidly, because duh.
“You weren’t responding. And you were naked,” he replies, as if that makes any sense whatsoever.
I rest my head back down on the pillow. “What does one have to do with the other?”
He scowls, and it’s so cute I can barely stand it. “What if someone broke into your house while you were in nothing but a towel?”
My mouth opens and closes like a fish before I can put together a sentence. Is he serious right now? “Are you serious right now? Honey, you need to put your crazy back in the box, mmkay?”
He lifts one brow. “Then why didn’t you respond? Did I freak you out?”
I sigh. “No. I laid down, and the second I inhaled my pillow and smelled your scent, it’s like I melted and can pretty much see myself being comatose for the next fourteen hours or so.”
His face goes soft. “But you don’t sleep in, remember?”
I close my eyes. “Then you better let me fall asleep so I can get enough hours in.”
He lets out a small chuckle. “All right, sugar. Message me when you get up, okay?”
All the muscles in my entire body, including my face go lax as I breathe in deep and slow, taking him into my lungs and letting it soothe me like nothing has before. My voice is mumbled, and the last thing I remember saying is “Okay, caveman. Sleep yummy… or whatev—”
Chapter 20
Curtis
I WATCH HER sleep for a good five minutes before she shifts onto her stomach, burying her phone beneath her. It kills me, but I end the call so I don’t run her battery down. Before I hit End Call, I had the fleeting thought to prop my phone on my pillow just so it’d feel like she was sleeping next to me, but that would be like… one hundred percent creeper status.
Needy bitch status.
Stage Five clinger status.
Everything I’ve never been before status.
I shake my head at myself. “Get ahold of yourself, man.”
But it feels like a piece of me is missing. Granted, it had felt like an entire half of me was missing all day, after realizing she was never coming home before I had to leave, while I was on my flight—which I refused to get the onboard WiFi so I wouldn’t obsessively be checking my notifications—and on the drive home from LAX airport. It wasn’t until after I showered and forced myself to eat something that I finally allowed myself to open Instagram.
I clicked on her profile, heat filling my chest when I saw the button read Follow Back instead of just Follow, and I clicked it immediately, hope springing up inside me and making my heart beat erratically. The first picture I came to was one she had snapped only a half-hour before, in front of her TV with our mutual friends on the screen. She was absolutely beautiful.
Her eyes were a little puffier than they were yesterday. Had she been crying, or was she just tired? I both loved and hated the idea of her crying over me. I wanted her to miss me, wanted her to want to be with me. The selfish part of me wanted her to be sad that I left, wanted her to be mad at herself for running and missing out on a day we could’ve spent together. But the bigger part of me, the part that wanted to protect and take care of the woman I never want to spend another day without, felt sick over the fact that she might’ve been upset all day, enough to bring her to tears. It made me want to fly right back to Louisiana and break down her door once I knew she was back home when she came out of hiding, and force her to see me again, force her to acknowledge these feelings between us.
