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Her smile is sad yet comforting. As if she can feel my pain and anxiety. As if it’s her own. As if she’d do anything to take it away. To make me feel better.
And fuck. It’s nice. Being able to lean on her when I need it most. Her stormy eyes are reassuring in a way I never could’ve anticipated. And right now, they’re solely focused on me. It means more than she’ll ever understand.
“I don’t wanna be alone tonight,” I tell her.
“Okay.”
“Do you have your medicine?”
She lifts her purse and jiggles it back and forth. “Way ahead of you.”
“All right.” I turn on the car, blast the heat, and pull onto the main road, heading back to my place.
38
KATE
“What do you want to do?” I ask, flicking on the kitchen light.
Mack’s home seems a little less inviting tonight. A little more stark. Part of me wonders if it’s because the man who makes the space a home is too preoccupied. Too distracted by Hazel and her lack of response to his text. Or texts, considering he pulled over twice on our way up to his house so he could send her a couple more. I don’t know what they said, and honestly, it doesn’t even matter. He’s hurting. And I hate how he’s hurting.
Squeezing the back of his neck, Mack tosses his keys onto the counter and shrugs. “No idea.”
“Are you saying you need something else tofocuson?” I prop my hip against the kitchen island and quirk my brow.
His chuckle is pathetic at best, but he nods. “Yeah, my prickly little porcupine. Looks like it’s your turn to distract me.”
My tongue clicks against the roof of my mouth as I wrack my brain for options. My mouth tilts up in a sly smile as I announce, “I have an idea.”
“Yeah?”
“Mm-hmm,” I hum, tucking my thumbs into the back pockets of my jeans. “Do you have blankets?”
His eyebrow arches. “Yes?”
“Like, a lot of them?”
“Yes?” he repeats, still unsure where I’m going with this line of questioning.
I clap my hands together. “Then, chop-chop, my sad little golden retriever. We have a fort to build.”
His laughter is less forced than earlier and eases the tightness in my chest that had settled there on the silent drive to his house. Without a word, he heads to a closet down the hall and returns with his arms full of blankets. Together, we drag his couch closer to the fire and bring in his kitchen chairs, throwing blankets on all the furniture and stretching the fabric from one side of the room to the other. In a stroke of genius, Mack grabs some clips from the pantry. Usually, they’re used for keeping potato chip bags closed, but tonight, we use them to keep the blankets in place on top of the chairs. They secure the fabric perfectly. It’s messy and childish and kind of ridiculous, but by the end, Mack is smiling. His eyes are crinkled at the corners, and his shoulders aren’t quite as tight as they were. Which means Operation Distraction is a success.
When he catches me staring, my grin widens. “Hi.”
“Hey,” he returns. “What are you lookin’ at?”
“My handiwork.” Without giving him a chance to respond, I dart down the hallway, steal the pillows off his bed, and create a comfy oasis beneath the canopy while Mack boots up his laptop and turns on a show.
It’s perfect.
The familiar opening song fromThe Officeechoes throughout the room as I pour some freshly microwaved popcorn into a bowl and head back to the fort, finding Macklin snuggled inside.
“You comin’?” he asks, lifting the edge of one of the blankets while giving me a sneak peek of his bare torso.
“You seem to be missing your shirt,” I point out.
“Don’t get me wrong, Kate, the idea of snuggling with you in a fort of blankets sounds amazing. But it’s gonna get hot as hell in here with the fire. Figured stripping the clothes would help cut down on the heat for a bit.”
