AllFreeNovel
Share Us
This. Fucking. Man.
Cade looked different. Out in the wild, he was all about beat-up denim and T-shirts that showed off his muscular chest. He wore military jackets and kept his hair styled in a no-fuss crew cut.
Right now, however, he looked like he’d rolled out of the movie Goodfellas. He wore a simple, impeccably tailored black suit over a white button-down shirt that did almost as good a job of highlighting his abs as his T-shirts had.
With the suit on I couldn’t make out any of the tattoos that covered both his arms, which was a shame, because those tattoos were a symbolic history of what made Cade who he was, and I desperately wanted to solve the riddle.
His usually short hair had grown out a bit in two months, and there were waves in the dark brown that I’d always assumed were there but had never gotten to see.
He smiled at me again, the flash of white teeth breaking up his typically stern visage. Cade wasn’t a handsome man, not the way Leo or Prescott were. He’d never qualify as beautiful. He looked like a boxer who had taken one too many hits to the face and the bones hadn’t healed quite right. Everything was a little crooked, the bridge of his nose a bit too flat.
To me, he was perfection in human form. Every quirk, everything that made him him, was one more detail to etch onto my memory to carry around with me until the day I died. I wanted to remember him, standing in the hall like a gangster, smiling at me as if I were the sun and I’d risen just for him.
“You look surprised to see me.” His voice rumbled inside me, taking a direct path from my ears to my groin.
It was all I could do to not jump him right there.
I was actually afraid of getting any closer to him.
For the longest time I’d honestly believed Cade was indifferent to me. Like I was a creature who existed in his periphery that he only took notice of when our paths crossed. Everything had changed this summer. We had changed. There was a we now. A him and a me. And I knew by the way he was looking at me right now I hadn’t imagined that.
“I wasn’t expecting you,” I said. “How did you know I was here?” Dumb question. This hotel was his temple.
“Please. Like you didn’t come here specifically so I’d know when you showed up.”
“Oh man, did the inflated ego come with the suit, or have you always been this full of yourself?” I tried to sound cool and casual, but I wasn’t sure I pulled it off. I was probably
grinning like an absolute maniac.
I inched a little closer, feeling like it might be safe to get near enough to smell him. Or see the whiskey hue of his eyes better. The lights out here were really terrible, after all, and it was only one step. Maybe two.
Be cool, Tallulah, don’t let him know how much you missed him.
He mirrored me, taking a few controlled steps in my direction, then stopped while we were still a few feet apart. His black dress shoes were polished to a high shine. He looked incredibly expensive.
“I’ve only ever been insufferable,” he said. “You were just too distracted by your overwhelming attraction to me to notice how terrible my personality was.”
I let out a little laugh. “Please.”
A smile ticked at the corner of his mouth. “Are you saying you aren’t attracted to me or that you like my shitty personality?”
I ignored the question. “So, which version is really you?” I nodded at the suit. “The pit boss or the guy who eats terrible Chinese food with me?”
He glanced down at his suit, smoothing his hands over his stomach. It was a cruel thing to do, forcing my eyes to follow that gesture, trailing along as he touched each button. Stopping at his belt.
My breath hitched. Amateur move.
“They’re both me.”
I was thinking about those buttons, wondering if they would fly off if I ripped the shirt open or if it was too well made for me to get away with something like that. I wondered about his belt too, about the way it would sound as I pulled it free from the loops of his pants.
“Eyes up here, Sparky.” He chuckled. “You’re drooling a little.”
“You’re looking a little edible,” I responded, before I could think better of saying it out loud.
Cade’s laugh filled the hallway in a merry, genuinely amused way. “Come on. I want to show you something.” He kept his hands in his pockets, like he didn’t trust himself with them. I could relate. If I touched him, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to stop.
Apparently that thing they say about absence making the heart grow fonder is legit. Except by heart they meant vagina.
