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Chapter Twelve
In which I get it right. For Once
Something was weird.
Everything smelled warm and soft and sweet.
The bed was warm and soft and sweet.
And I wasn’t alone. There was another person next to me.
Someone I was quite happy to be waking up with.
I felt myself smile at the feeling of my arm over her waist.
My eyes worked their way open, and I saw a ceiling that was definitely not mine. The pillows under my head were definitely not mine. The girl beside me was definitely not mine, but maybe – just maybe – I could let myself pretend just for a moment. Just this once.
She wriggled, her arse brushing up against my morning wood in far too pleasant a way. I felt a chuckle rumble through my chest, and I kissed her shoulder. “Morning, Barlow.”
“I didn’t peg you for a snuggler,” she said, almost too quickly and I wondered what she was thinking.
“Does it count as snuggling if all we did was watch movies and fall asleep?” I asked, buoyed on waking up beside her.
I knew it counted. It counted for a lot more than I should let it. A part of me knew that she knew, too, but I told it to shut the fuck up. The only way I could justify whatever the fuck I thought I was doing with her was to not think about it. If I didn’t think about it, I couldn’t fuck it up. Or at least, I was going to tell myself that I couldn’t fuck something up if I didn’t realise I was doing it. Anything to hold onto this feeling she gave me.
I didn’t realise there’d been a pause until she spoke.
“Roman?” she asked, her voice uncertain.
Fuck.
All of that good feeling she gave me was doused in an icy bucket of dread.
I didn’t know what I’d done this time, but I was pretty sure I’d fucked up again.
“Piper?”
“Is there…? I mean… Why did…?” She stuttered to a stop, and I would have found it cuter had I not been freaking the fuck out she was about to kick me out and be glad to see the back of me.
“You want to try that again?” I asked, aiming for light-hearted as though that would change what felt like the inevitable.
“The other night?” she started.
“Yeah…?” I asked slowly, not at all liking where I thought this was heading.
“Was it…bad…?”
The way she looked at me, it was like she blamed herself.
That was her concern? That was all it was? This was about something other than her realising the truth about me? Did she actually think she’d been…unsatisfying? I had no problem at all putting her mind to rest over that.
I rolled her onto her back and held myself half over her. “Bad? Why would you ask if it was bad?”
She shrugged like it didn’t matter, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I don’t know. You just didn’t…” Then, she muttered a hushed, “Like it matters.”
If it mattered to her, then… “It matters to me,” I told her gently. “What is it?”
“I don’t know. I guess I just thought… After we’d done it once… You were in my bed… You’d want to do it again?”
