AllFreeNovel
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I shouldn’t be ogling a half naked god of a man.
Definitely not.
We reach the second floor and Finn leads me down a hallway to the left, and hitches a thumb at the hall behind us. “Ron and Kelsey’s room is that way, on the opposite side of the house.”
I don’t say anything, and I don’t think he expects me to. It was just a simple offer of information. He stops in front of a door midway down the hall. There’s only one more door farther down and I realize we must be nearly to the back of the house, away from the road and toward the forest that lines the back of the community.
Finn leans against the wall next to the door, and I again ignore how his muscles flex under his skin.
“This is your room here. Mine is just down the hall. I wanted you close to keep an eye on you.”
My brows droop and my fingers fiddle with the bracelets on my wrists. “What, like you don’t trust a commoner in your palace?”
His gaze goes even harder. “Yeah, something like that.”
Oh, wow. “I’m not a thief. I’m not going to steal your shit.”
“I didn’t say you would.”
I take a deep breath.I release all that is not in alignment with me.“Well, thanks. For welcoming me to your home so graciously. Its really made this transition so much easier.” Without waiting for a response, I push open my door, step through, and close it as quickly as I can.
Closing my eyes, I take another deep breath while leaning against the door. When I feel like I have my emotions under control, I open them again and just fucking freeze. I blink, rub my eyes and then look again.
I’d expected the room to have a bed, a dresser and impersonal art on the walls. I’d expected a guest room that I could stay in as aguestin this house for a few months before making my escape.
The bedroom that Finn had brought me to is undoubtedly mine. I can tell it’s mine because all of my stuff is here and it’s a near exact replica of my tiny bedroom in the apartment. My queen sized bed, my desk, my plants and crystals, my bookshelf with all my books. My art on the walls. My chipped dresser. My throw pillows. Everything in this room marks it as mine, just… bigger. A lot fucking bigger.
More space between the dresser and my desk, placed so it’s facing the window. The giant cream colored area rug is new. My bedroom had worn light grey carpet. More space around the bed. There’s a second nightstand that matches mine exactly.
My heart beats faster as I wander over to the shelf holding my plants. A lot of them are worse for wear. I haven’t seen them in months, but someone must have been taking care of them. I briefly wonder if my mom had been returning to our apartment without telling me, if she’d been packing up our things slowly over the months and bringing them here.
If she’d always known I would bend enough to come here.
I drop my duffle in the middle of my new area rug and turn to the two doors that definitely weren’t a part of my old bedroom. The first opens to an immense walk-in closet, bigger than I need. I don’t have a lot of clothes to begin with, but as I step in, I see that that’s not really an issue.
The clothes I’d left behind when we fled to the refugee camps have been brought here, folded neatly and stowed away or hanging from black velvet hangers. But mixed in with my black t-shirts and jeans and skirts and sweaters, are new items, in all colors. Blue, purple, red, grey. Freakingyellow. Some of them I could see myself wearing, some of them are so far away from what I like, I know they’ll never move from where they are right now. Like the flowery, flowy shirts that look more like something my mother would wear than me.
I have a feeling she picked out most of the new clothes and this is her way of gently urging me to fit in. To make an effort.
I sigh, return to my room, dump out the contents of my bag and sort my clothes into dirty and clean clothes. I fold what I can and put them away, leave the dirty clothes in a pile on the floor and then gather up my bath stuff and head to the second door, assuming it’s an en suite.
At least in a house this big, it should be. And if I’m honest, the idea of having a shower or a bath in a room that isn’t shared by twenty other people is damn appealing.
A squeak leaves me as I open the door, because there on the other side of it is Finn, standing, still shirtless, at the double vanity, a toothbrush hanging out of his mouth. “What are you doing?”
He turns to face me, arches a brow, bends to spit and then says, “What?”
“Why are you in my bathroom?Howdid you get in my bathroom?”
He rinses his toothbrush. “It’s our bathroom, jelly. Not yours.”
My mouth falls open in both frustration—Calling me jelly because I have a belly, real fucking mature—and surprise at the fact that we are apparently sharing a bathroom. Now that I’ve gotten over my initial shock of finding Finn in a room I’d expected to be empty, I see a second door leading into the bathroom.
I shake my head. “No. I don’t- I don’t want to share with you. There’s another room, right? One with its own bathroom?”
He grins at me, and there is something sharp in the curve of his lips. “Nope. All the other rooms are for guests. Dad doesn’t want them to have to share. Lucky us, we get to.”
I shift the bottles in my arms. “I thought I was a guest.”
