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I blinked. “How long have you been up?”
“Since five,” he replied.
“Mm-hm. Imagine my surprise, Holland, when I woke up to the smell of coffee this morning and found this man in my kitchen.”
I burst out laughing because Mia’s voice was casual and pleasant, but she was staring at me unblinkingly in an attempt to convey the true shock she’d experienced this morning.
“Man. Sorry I was just sleeping like a rock,” I said, sitting at the end of the couch. “So… what have you guys been talking about?”
Mia answered in singsong. “Oh, nothing. Iain’s just telling me about your plans today.”
I cocked my head at him. “Which are?”
His eyes glimmered on me as he shrugged. “Whatever you want to do,” he said. “We can do what you originally planned or we can just hang out here. But I canceled most of my meetings for tomorrow and I only have a few calls to make. So we don’t have to rush. We can just take it easy and relax.”
“Huh.” I raised my eyebrows, trying to control just how big I grinned because I could feel Mia’s barely-contained giddiness as she watched me. “Never thought I’d hear you say those words,” I said to Iain, making him crack a smile.
“Yeah, well. You tend to get things out of me,” he said, his voice light but a look in his eyes that told me I’d be getting all his truth today. Everything I’d ever wanted to know.
But for the next few hours, we just sat with Mia and talked. About his job. Her job. The dirt on her coworkers. The scoop on his clients, and which of them he could realistically set her up with.
It wasn’t the most serious conversation, but it was a good laugh, and the whole time, I just sat back, pretending that this was just my life. Sitting around my apartment with my amazing best friend and the unbelievably beautiful man in my life. All of us just casually chatting and laughing. Having a good time. But then I broke into a big grin about an hour in, because that was when it struck me that I wasn’t pretending.
That this was actually mine.
36
HOLLAND
Apparently, during their hunt for a towel last night, Adam and A.J got into one of their customary blowout fights—just their usual airing out of the usual grievances that never lasted long or impacted how well they worked with each other after.
Predictably, they were all made up by the morning, but still, the argument seemed to be the reason for why Adam was now “hung over beyond repair” and needing to “stay in till further notice.”
Which worked just fine for Iain and me.
Our daytime wound up being spent around the city with me drifting repeatedly between fresh shock and warm comfort for the fact that we were strolling hand in hand.
Iain had never seemed like a hand-holding guy to me. I couldn’t imagine him doing it even when I was younger, and I’d imagined him a lot in all sorts of ways.
But despite the fact that it kept hitting me with awe, the hand-holding felt natural. Sweet. Perfect, even, because I needed this balance, so our touch wasn’t all or nothing. Just somewhere in between sometimes. A happy medium.
Since Mia had work, we wound up going back to my place for dinner, ordering a pizza and settling on the couch to watch an Empires game like we used to at my house back in Jersey.
The only difference now was that we were watching his friend Drew Maddox pitch, and instead of sitting at the very edge of the long end of the sectional—the only seat my nerves could survive with Iain’s long body stretched out on the couch—I was curled on my side right next to Iain’s warm body, my head nestled on his hard chest and his hand resting in the curve of my waist.
As the game played, I asked him to remind me about the rules, and as he did, I couldn’t help but be fascinated by the way soap smelled on his skin. The way our bodies fit together like puzzle pieces on the very end of my couch.
It wasn’t till the fifth inning that my mind drifted back to the morning.
“Was your mom the one who taught you how to make that coffee?” I asked, peering up at Iain. I watched his eyes go from the game to me, his gaze soft on me as he answered.
“Yeah.”
“Liv, right?” I asked.
“Olivia. My dad called her Livvie though. She hated it,” he said with something of a laugh. “And him. But we all did.”
I held my gaze on him for a moment, recognizing a flicker of something new in his eyes. Apprehension. And I knew it was because he wasn’t used to talking about this.
