AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Are you done eating?” Vic asks, glancing down at the food.
“Yeah.” I smile. “I’m good.”
He nods, gathering up the trash from the meal and making a face at the pile that his brothers left on their bed.
“You should get some more rest,” he tells me. “You’re still recovering.”
The minute he says it, I can feel how tired I still am. My body aches, and there’s a headache forming behind my eyes—the kind I get when I’m too worn out. My whole body feels like overcooked pasta, floppy and barely able to support itself. But I think about how I woke up after that nightmare, feeling like I didn’t know where I was, so on edge and afraid. That probably wore me out more than anything else, and I don’t want to go back to that.
“I don’t really feel like sleeping,” I mutter, not quite meeting Vic’s gaze.
He doesn’t press me for more information, and there’s something in his expression that tells me he understands how I feel without me having to go into detail about it.
He’s always so good at that. I swear he can read me like he’s got an open line directly into my brain sometimes.
“Okay,” he murmurs. “Then how about we turn on the TV and relax that way? Watching cable is the best thing about hotels. Or at least that’s what Ransom always says.”
I nod my agreement, and Vic shuffles things around. He steals the pillows from the other bed and props them up on mine, fluffing them and arranging the sheets.
I scoot up and make myself comfortable, hugging one of the pillows close. Vic climbs up beside me, keeping some distance between us as he settles in.
Just like before, when Vic was anxious about being touched, there’s tension between us—although now the roles are reversed. But I can feel it, crackling and electric in the space between our bodies on the bed. There’s so much want there, so much desire, and it’s coming from both of us. I want more than anything to just roll over there and tuck myself under his arm. To rest my head on his chest and feel that closeness. And more than that, I want to act on those feelings that rose up before, in the wake of our confessions.
But I know I can’t. I’m still not ready for it, and Vic doesn’t push for anything. Heunderstands, which helps more than he’ll ever know.
Picking up the remote, he scrolls through the TV guide channel for a bit before turning to one of the home improvement shows I like so much.
“Oh, this one,” he comments. “This isn’t one of the better ones.”
I glance over at him. “How do you know? I didn’t think you really watched TV.”
He shrugs lightly. “I don’t, normally. But I did some research.”
“On home improvement shows?” I furrow my brow, confused. Of all the things for Vic to put his considerable talent at hunting down information toward, this one seems very strange.
“Yes. And the concept of home improvement itself, I guess. At first, I just wanted to see how accurate these shows are when it comes to showing the process of remodeling a home. I assumed a good amount of it was just dramatized for the show, and I was right about that. Some of them get it closer than others, and some are just full of drama. This is one of the dramatic ones.”
He nods to where the woman in overalls is talking to the home owners. And he’s not wrong. This is one of the ones where a family calls in an expert to renovate their house, and usually they either don’t have enough money or the house turns out to be in worse shape than they thought, and it all gets very emotional.
As if on cue, the wife in the couple starts crying on camera, talking about how their baby is only five months old and has barely been able to sleep at night because of a heating issue with the house.
“We’re all just so exhausted,” she says, weeping to the designer. “When she’s not sleeping, we’re not sleeping, and we’re at the point where we’re considering just paying for a hotel for a while, because we can’t go on like this.”
The shot shows her holding the baby, rocking her in her arms, and then zooms in on her exhausted face.
Yup. Definitely dramatic.
“But why?” I ask Vic, turning back to him.
“Because drama sells,” he explains with a shrug. “Probably more than discussing crown molding or outdated HVAC systems.”
“No, I mean… why did you do all that research?”
“Because you like these shows,” he answers, as if it should be obvious. “At first, I wanted to know why. They didn’t seem all that entertaining, and you were so fascinated with them. I wanted to see if there was something I was missing. And then I just wanted to feel… closer to you, I guess. I wanted to understand you better, so I started with something you enjoyed. It helped me keep my shit together when you had to stay away from us. I imagined you in your apartment watching a show like this, and it made me feel like we were there together.”
“Oh.” For a second, I just stare at him, surprised and touched. “You really do love me, don’t you?”
His brows pull together, a confused look crossing his face. “Of course I do. Did you not believe me earlier?”
