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This was a one-time thing. She’s going to leave in the morning. It’s going to be awkward.
This isn’t a one-time thing. She’s going to want to see you again. What are you going to say?
You see? My fucked-up brain.
I sat up in bed, rummaged on the floor for my leg, and put it on. Part of me didn’t want her to see me like this; it was too exposed for me, too intimate. No one had seen my body up close in four years except doctors, and that was the way I liked it. No one to see, really see, what it looked like. It was easier that way. I could do that this morning, too. Just put jeans on before she woke up and avoid the whole thing.
Instead, I put on a clean pair of boxers and walked out into the kitchen to make coffee.
I had put it all in the maker and was watching it drip when I heard her get up, shuffle around the bedroom, go into the bathroom. Oh, fuck. I stared at the ceiling. Was my bathroom a mess? Shit, I couldn’t remember.
I heard her come out, into the kitchen behind me. I kept my back turned.
“Hey,” she said.
Don’t be an asshole, Max. Turn around.
I did.
She was wearing my shirt.
My stomach dropped and did a strange twist. It was the shirt I’d worn under my sweater last night, that I’d dropped on the floor. She had it on now—and, it looked like, nothing else. The hem of the shirt went to the middle of her thighs.
She ran a hand through her tousled blonde hair, her eyes on me, and I saw a flicker of uncertainty there, like she wasn’t sure what I would think.
I cleared my throat. “You want some coffee?” I asked.
She shrugged, dropped her hand again. I turned back to the coffee. Fuck. I should say something. I wanted to say something, but my words wouldn’t come. They never came when it was important, and sometimes they didn’t come at all. This was my fucking problem.
She came around the counter and stood next to me. The uncertain look was gone, or maybe buried, and she gave me a sweetly flirtatious look instead. “You’re cute when you’re tongue-tied,” she said.
I banged a mug on the counter. “I’m not cute,” I grumbled. “You want sugar?”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Probably not.”
“What’s your tattoo?” She reached up a hand and traced the ink on my shoulder, down my bicep.
My body roared to life when she touched me, but I kept it locked down. I took my hand off the coffee cup and looked down at my shoulder, watching her pretty, manicured fingertip tracing it. “It’s initials,” I said.
“I can see the letters here,” she said, looking closely in the daylight, sliding her fingertip over the swirls of the stylized initials. “What do they mean?”
“J, D, K,” I said, quoting the letters. “James, David, Keishon. They died in the attack.”
“Oh,” she said softly, with an edge of sadness, tracing the letters again. She didn’t have to ask what attack.
“I lived,” I said. “They died. It seemed the least I could do.”
“It’s nice,” she said. Her fingertip left my shoulder and moved along my collarbone. “If that was my brother, I’d be glad you did it.”
“You have a brother?”
“No.” She didn’t elaborate, just traced her hand along my collarbone and down my chest. She seemed to be looking closely at me in the daylight, which was exactly what I’d been dreading—and yet now that she was doing it, I didn’t mind. I looked at her face while her eyes were lowered. Even in the tired light of the morning after, with her hair messy and her makeup long gone, she unfuckingbelievable. I had no idea why this woman was in my kitchen, wearing nothing but my shirt.
“We really have nothing in common, do we?” she asked, letting her touch slide down my chest to my stomach. “I mean, you have all of those terrible experiences overseas, and I dropped out of acting school and became a stripper.”
I winced. I didn’t like to think of her job, not right now. Not when she was looking at me like no other woman ever had. “We have plenty in common,” I replied, my voice gruff. “We both like sex.”
