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“Any preferences?” I asked, looking around, liking the idea of giving his home some personality. He certainly had enough of it himself; his house should have reflected that.
“Not that clean-line, minimalist, modern crap. I like things comfortable.”
“I can do comfortable,” I agreed with a nod.
“Oh, yeah?” he asked, looking down at my feet. Which were in heels. High ones. Ones he would likely charmingly call Tiffany or something equally as ridiculous, having not a bit of an idea about designers. Which, honestly, was refreshing to me. I was around that at work. It was nice to get away from it outside of that.
“Hey! You were the one who insisted on showing up at my apartment at five. I didn’t have time to change into anything else.”
I had gotten into that habit.
After Carson City.
After realizing that jeans and a tee were a lot more comfortable than blouses and slacks.
It wouldn’t fly at work, and it wasn’t the image I wanted to project there, but at home, around Gunner? I found I liked letting my hair down a bit.
“And go ahead and go HAAM on that guest room, duchess. If that’s gonna be your studio, it should have you all over it.”
My studio.
It was odd to feel wonder at those words.
I did, after all, have a large apartment in Manhattan and a business that had a giant office. I had plenty of spaces that were my own.
But the word studio did something to me, it unsurfaced something I had tried to bury as a teen when my mother had done her best – and somewhat succeeded – in dashing my dreams of being an artist.
“That’s a good look,” Gunner said, head ducked to the side as he watched me.
“What?”
“Hope,” he said easily.
Hope.
I guess it was that.
Hope.
It was new for me.
But I had a feeling I was going to get used to it.
Gunner – 2 months
Mateo was pretty much Sloane 2.0.
I couldn’t really tell if that was a good thing or not.
I guess it was good in that it allowed Sloane to take a step back, that she had more time to live her life, to spend with me, to work on her art, to just be a person.
But if I thought Sloane worked too hard before, Mateo put her to fucking shame. Maybe it was because she had just given him a lot of power, and he was trying to prove himself.
I had a feeling it was more than that, though.
Because the word that came to mind when you met him was hungry. It was the exact same thing that allowed Sloane to rise as she had in her life.
It was admirable.
But it also meant that when Sloane didn’t pick up her phone – because we had been fucking in the shower – he showed up at the door, let himself in, and launched into some work issue as though we weren’t both mostly-naked, clad only in towels, Sloane’s hair dripping down her shoulders as he paced her living room, ranting about some swatches from France that were delayed or some shit.
And then Sloane said something that, in her past life, I doubt would have ever even occurred to her to say.
“Mateo, relax. It will all shake out.”
Shake out.
That wasn’t her talk.
That was me talk.
“Shake out!” Mateo exploded, literally throwing up his hands, pacing all over again. “‘Shake out,’ she says!” he hissed to the universe at large.
“Okay,” Sloane said, turning to me, holding back a smile. “Please tell me I wasn’t that bad,” she said, eyes dancing.
“I could. But then I’d be lying,” I told her, chuckling when she swatted me in the chest. “You gotta do something about him before he has a fucking conniption.”
So then I got to watch one high-strung workaholic try to calm down another.
I was half-pissed there wasn’t popcorn and Twizzlers being sold for this shit.
But, I realized as I watched them, that some shit, it happened for a reason.
I had never been someone who subscribed to beliefs like that, who put stock in the idea of fate and shit.
But even a skeptic would have to start putting two and two together.
If Sloane had never seen a man lose his life, had never done the right thing, had never been punished for it, had never hired security that failed her, but pointed her in my direction, this never would have been possible.
She would have stayed in the same place for her whole life.
And, well, so would have I.
So maybe, just this once, I could believe in it.
Sloane – 5 months
“What?” I hissed into the phone, sure I misheard her. It was loud there in Gunner’s office, with all his people gathered, talking loudly about someone named Fenway. Who everyone had very strong opinions on. And not a single one of them was positive.
“You heard me,” Auddie insisted.
