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It was filled with toothbrushes like he was the fucking dentist’s office. Dozens of them, still in the plastic, brand new, every color, and I swear I wanted to reach in with both hands and take them all. Funny how seeing my ass bright red wasn’t our only overlapping obsession.
“Let me guess. You lost your toothbrush a lot,” I muttered, and I kind of meant it as a joke, but he nodded.
“Yeah, I was bad at leaving those behind. And they’d just kind of disappear from whatever house I wasn’t staying in. Like they’d forget I was coming back and toss it. Makes me feel better having extras. Plus now I can bust out a new one every time I eat your ass. Make you feel better.”
I snorted, feeling my face get a little hot, and tried to pick one with just my eyes without digging through them all greedy, even though that’s what I wanted to do. Gray wasn’t a toothbrush color I didn’t think, so when he shook it again and a green one shuffled to the top, I picked that one, cracking it open carefully, enjoying the new-new-new every second I possibly could.
“Thanks,” I said, soft and serious, meaning it more than I knew how to explain. These weren’t small things he was doing, laundry and food and toothbrushes, and a fucking place to stay, but I couldn’t think about how big they really were, or I’d fall apart.
“Yeah. Of course.” He touched the back of my neck, my hair, my shoulder, making it casual. “Take whatever else you need,” he told me, putting the basket away and leaving me alone in the bathroom.
It took awhile for my throat to loosen up, and then I brushed my teeth for a long, long time.
* * *
“Do you want me to leave the light on?”he asked me when he came back from the bathroom, his hand hovering over the light switch. “I left one on over the sink. And in the living room.”
“I’m okay. You don’t have to do that,” I told him, sitting up in bed, but it made me feel soft inside, like maybe I didn’tneedit, but I did secretlywantit, at least part of me did.
“Just until you get used to where everything is,” he said, not arguing exactly, but telling me how it was. “So you don’t stub your toes or anything. On or off?”
“Off,” I told him, and he flipped the switch and the room went dark. After a minute, my eyes adjusted, and I could see the faint light glowing from out in the hallway and some lights from the courtyard through the window. It wasn’t really that dark at all.
“Still okay?” Caleb asked me, still waiting by the doorway just in case, and I nodded.
“Yeah,” I told him, in case he couldn’t see me. “I’m fine. Come to bed.”
When he slipped in beside me, taking up a giant amount of space in the giant bed, making it feel small, it was such a good feeling, and when he slid close, wrapping his arm around me just like he said he would, makingmefeel small, it was even better. I never really liked being touched all that much, but he did it different somehow, I guess. He did everything different.
He tucked his chin up against my shoulder and kissed me on the neck, and I squirmed back against him without even thinking, fitting right into the warm pocket his body made and he held me tighter. “I’m here if you need anything,” he told me. “I’m not going anywhere. And neither are you.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
I didn’t jolt out of sleep on Sunday morning, I fucking crawled like I’d been drugged. It was such a struggle to get my eyes open I was sure I was hungover, and I waited for the sour fur on my tongue and the pounding in my skull to lock in while I shook off the amnesia, staring out a door that wasn’t mine into a hallway that wasn’t mine, squinting in sunlight that definitely wasn’t mine, my brain whirring and whirring and whirring until it finally caught and I remembered where I was.
Remembered everything.
“Fuck,” I muttered, and turned my head, buried my face in the soft, clean pillow that smelled like Caleb, sucking in a deep breath, filling my lungs with him, trying to judge this situation on a scale of major-league-fuck-up to end-of-the-world.
“Morning.”
I jumped when his hand touched the back of my neck and his voice buried me in chunks of concrete. My throat was gravelly first thing in the morning too, but his voice was core-of-the-earth deep, barely even human, and god, why did I like that so much.
“Fuck,” I whispered again, because it was really the only thing that applied.
It was fucking crazy I’d really spent the night here. Just walked out on my house and acted like I was never going home, like it was just that easy. I was probably the dumbest person on the planet. And somehow I’d ended up waking up in the world’s most comfortable bed anyway.
When he brushed his fingers through my hair, it feltsofucking good. My whole body was sore in a million different ways, from stress and exhaustion and football and fucking, and even my hair was sore, aching at the roots, and I groaned and closed my eyes again as he scratched his fingertips across my scalp.
The longer he did it the more it seemed like there was extra air in my lungs, extra blood in my veins until I was lightheaded from it, choking on it. I wasn’t made to feel this good, and I should have known my body would start rejecting it pretty soon, spitting it back out once I swallowed too much.
I shook his hand off, turning my head and scowling at him. I was suddenly so fuckingangry.I knew what the fuck morning-afters were. Not the sex kind, but the kind when people make late night promises and when you wake up it’s all burned off like it never happened.I’m your Daddy and you live here now?What the fuck was even wrong with me, was I six years old?
The Beast looked so goddamn relaxed and casual, just laying in bed next to me, like this wasn’t completely psychotic, like I wasn’t just doing some version of spa weekend in a borrowed penthouse, pretending to be someone I wasn’t.
“I have to go home,” I told him.
He almost looked like he was expecting me to say that, and that was fucking annoying. “No.”
