AllFreeNovel
Share Us
ADALYN
Paint roller in hand,I blow loose pieces of hair out of my eyes. My shoulders burn, and my lower back hurts like a bitch, but I continue painting the wall in front of me. With a shimmy of my hips to the beat of the music playing from my phone, I press the roller into the paint, soaking it again.
“Addie?” I hear Cooper call through the house.
“Back here!” Nerves begin to swell in my belly.
It wasn’t my intention to paint Cooper’s house, but Ivy is a dangerous influence, and when we went to look at paint swatches for her new place after the shoot, I couldn’t say no. I did choose to stick to his spare room for now. Just in case he wasn’t actually serious about me painting his walls.
How awkward.
I drop to a squat and rest the paint roller on the edge of the can before wiping my hands off on my sweatpants and pausing the music. The sound of footsteps moving down the hallway has me popping back up and spinning around, moving to block the entrance to the spare room.
“Hey, good-looking,” I blurt out, my eyes clashing with Cooper’s. He looks exhausted. Sad, even. I don’t like it at all. “Are you okay?”
“Hi, love,” he says, the words sounding weak. “How was your day?”
“It was good. I’m tired, though. Too much sun. How was yours? Did you get any Liam cuddles?”
I go to take a step closer to him, wanting to hug him after being apart all day, but he stiffens, making me pause. Fear swells in my stomach as I stay where I am.
“Is it the paint smell that’s bothering you?” I ask.
He slowly slips past me into the room and stares at the pastel pink wall I’ve nearly finished painting. His throat bobs with a swallow while a broken expression twists his features. Regret throttles me.
My cheeks burn with embarrassment as I ramble my next words. “I can paint over it. I should have asked you if I could do this, but you told me I could decorate how I wanted, even if that meant painting. I figured I could just keep all of my stuff in this room because it was pretty empty, and then it wouldn’t look like a pink fairy threw up in your house, but I don’t know what I was thinking with the painting. I’m sorry.”
He doesn’t say anything, and I could smack myself upside the head at how silly this entire idea was. I’ve been here for all of a week and have already destroyed his spare room.
I swallow past the rock in my throat and shove my hands in my pockets, rocking on my heels. “How about we just shut this door, and I’ll run out and buy some different paint? Is beige okay? I’ll have to repaint the whole room so that it matches the old colour, or I can just try to match it to the other walls as best I can. Your choice.”
Still silent, he looks across the room, focusing on the boxes of things I have pushed up against the opposite wall. They’re mostly filled with random décor items like vases, lamp shades, and a couple of fuzzy throw blankets that I couldn’t get myself to set out around the house.
“How much pink paint did you buy?” he asks, finally breaking his silence.
My brows pinch as I point to the can in the corner of the room. “Just that one.”
He stares at it with something that looks a lot like astonishment before glancing back at me. The emotion I find in his eyes makes my pulse speed up. Shit, I don’t know what I did to deserve being looked at like that. Like he would burn down the entire world for me if I asked him to.
“When I told you to decorate my house, I meant it. The pillows, the blankets, the fringe lamp shades, the goddamn painted walls. It should be out there, not in here, trapped away. You’re not keeping any part of yourself hidden from me. Now, come with me so we can properly make this your home.”
He doesn’t wait for me to reply before gripping the paint roller in one hand and the handle of the paint can in the other and stalking off. My feet are glued to the floor as I watch him carry it all out of the spare room and disappear down the hall.
“Where are you taking that?” I shout.
“Come and find out.”
Forcing myself to move, I take a long look at the pink wall and then scurry out of the room. I find Cooper in the master bedroom. He’s begun pulling the bed from against the wall, determination written all over him.
“What are you doing?” I squeak.
He huffs a laugh. “If you want to paint the walls pink, start here. In our room. Not a spare room that has never seen anyone besides me and now you.”
“I’m not painting your room pink, Cooper.”
His eyes narrow on me. “Ourroom, Adalyn.”
Ignoring the flutters his specification awakens in my belly, I wave a hand in the air. “I’m not paintingourroom pink. I’m truly okay with having the spare room as my dedicated space to decorate.”
