I continue combing my fingers through his hair until his breathing evens out and his arm grows heavy on me.
I allow myself a few more minutes of just touching him like this. Of looking at him without him knowing it. His eyelashes casts shadows over his cheeks in the dim light. He hasn’t shaved in a few days, making his usual scruff more pronounced.
I want to trace my finger along the curve of his eyebrow, down his straight nose, and his full lips. I love his lips. I know what it’s like to kiss them. They’re even softer than they look.
And I’m in deep, deep shit.
I’ve built my walls carefully, meticulously, brick by brick. And he disintegrates each and every one of them by just existing. He doesn’t even know it. And I hate that I lie to him every damn day. I hate it. But I can’t stop. I can’t tell him.
I stop my hand, gently lifting his arm off me and he stirs.
“What’re you doing?” he mumbles.
“I’m going home. Let you get some sleep.”
He grabs hold of my sweater. “Stay,” he whispers.
And who am I to deny this guy?
I can’t. That’s the thing. I fucking can’t.
So, I move back and tuck myself in next to him. He places his arm around me, and falls asleep again within the next couple of minutes.
Sometime during the night, he wakes me up, and I’m half asleep when we wander off into his bedroom. Don’t even bother taking off my clothes before I hit the pillow and drift off again.
“Where’s Kaden?” Iggy stands with her hands on her hips, frowning at me.
“Home, I’d presume,” I say, wiping down the counter.
It’s cleaning Saturday, and Kaden’s not here. I, on the other hand, had been here for three hours already when Iggy walked in. I woke up at the ass crack of dawn with Kaden curled around me, and I just had to leave.
I went straight here.
Figured I might as well clean this place down while rinsing my mind of anything Kaden related.
Surprise—it didn’t work.
“Oh, my god. He’s got a cold! He’s not dying. Fucking man-baby!” Iggy states, throwing her arms out.
I stop in my tracks, lick my bottom lip, staring at her. “You know Zach got sick last year?”
“His brother? Yeah?” She shakes her head.
“Did you know he was on ventilator?”
“What? Isn’t he like… thirty?”
“Twenty-eight. At the time. They didn’t know if he was gonna make it. Found out he’s got a heart condition that almost killed him.”
“Oh, my god,” she says, placing a hand over her mouth. “I’m an asshole.”
“Yeah, you are,” I say, and pick up the rag again. “But so am I, so you’re in good company.”
37
Kaden
“He’sback!”Sethyellswhen I enter the studio on Monday. He picks up his phone, typing something and then “Eye of the Tiger” is streaming through the speakers. Hate that song.
