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“No. This is fine.” He sets the bags down. “Do you want to change first?” He jerks a thumb to the bathroom, and I nod and grab my suitcase, grateful to escape so I don’t have to watch him process how close we’re going to be all night long.
Once I’ve washed my face, brushed my teeth, and changed into my sleep shirt and shorts, I ease the door open to find that Sebastian’s now wearing flannel pants and a dark tee.
He looks good, the bastard. But his obvious reluctance to share a bed makes it clear where his thoughts are, which is just as well. A repeat of last night would be an absolute disaster in so very many ways.
He takes a little travel kit with him into the bathroom, and when he steps back out, I’ve already slid under the covers.
“I’ll sleep on the floor so you—”
“Nope.” I was ready for this, and I’m shutting it down. “You need the sleep. On a mattress.”
His eyes trace up the comforter to where I’m covered to my chest. “You’re right.” But his eyes roll to the ceiling as he sucks in a deep breath. “We’re adults.”
He exhales hard and returns his travel kit to his suitcase, and as he does, he jostles my canvas bag, which flips over to reveal a gaudy pink boa.
“Oh, sorry.” He moves to set it upright, but pauses and opens it wider. “Is this Miss Gouda?”
I’m tired. I’m stressed out from our almost accident. I’m turned inside out by hours in the car with Sebastian. And I definitely, absolutely do not want to discuss why I’m hauling that drag queen ostrich halfway across the country. And while the sight of Sebastian St. Claire brandishing Gouda’s glittery magnificence is hilarious in the abstract, the whole situation also reminds me that I’ll never truly be able to leave Burlington behind. So at the risk of another emotional breakdown, I limit my response to, “It is.”
He turns to look at Gouda like she’s the third member of this conversation. “Why do you—”
“Just”—I close my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose to hold back the tears—“just leave it alone, okay?”
He stills, then sets her carefully down on top of the bag. “Okay.” A beat, then, “I still think she needs a tiara.”
Oh, how I wish I could giggle along to that. I wish I could be that girl from the bar again, but I don’t have the bar anymore. I don’t know if I’m that girl anymore.
He finishes getting ready in silence, and by the time he slides into bed, all my thoughts disappear except forthis man is going to sleep next to me tonight.He’s sticking to his side as carefully as I’m sticking to mine, and things are awkward again. Not the tense hostility from this morning, but I’m distinctly aware that I’ve seen Sebastian naked, and before things ended poorly, they were incredible. The reminder has me pressing my thighs tightly together.
“Lights off?” His gruff voice doesn’t help my skin forget his touch.
“Yes please,” I say quickly. We both click off the lamps on either side of the bed, plunging the room into darkness. For a while, the only sounds are from the hallway outside, where a door slams and someone with a heavy tread makes their way to the ice machine.
Almost without meaning to, I whisper, “I’ve always wanted to visit Niagara Falls.”
I don’t know why I’m keeping my voice down, but it feels right to murmur confessions into the blackness surrounding us.
“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”
I shrug, then realize he can’t see it.
“I don’t know. We didn’t take a lot of vacations growing up, and Niagara Falls always looked fun and touristy. Stay in a really cheesy hotel with, like, a heart-shaped bed and satin sheets. Take a boat out to see the falls up close. Get soaked with spray.” I roll to my side and curl my knees into my chest.
I realize how that might sound and add, “I’m not asking us to stop obviously, and they probably don’t even make hotel rooms like that anymore. I’m just…”
WhatamI just? I’m just sharing inane confidences with a stranger.
A kind stranger who laughs softly on the mattress next to me. “Well it’d be a terrible time to be on the water what with the blizzard.”
“Ha. Yeah.” I sigh. “It was a stupid thought.”
“No.” His answer’s immediate, and the mattress dips as he rolls to face me. I can barely make out his profile in the tiny bit of light trickling under the room door. I can see the outline of his jaw, the fall of his hair. “It’s one of your dream vacation spots. It’d be weird for you to be so close without thinking about visiting.”
His kindness has me blinking back tears, and I absolutely clamp down on that shit. I cannot cry in front of this man again. But I didn’t expect him to be so understanding about it.
Then he shocks me.
“If things were different…” He starts the thought but doesn’t finish it, and every cell in my body strains in his direction to find out how he was going to finish that sentence. If things were different… what, exactly? If the weather were different, he’d have made time to stop? If our night together hadn’t ended so badly, he’d have looked for a hotel with red satin sheets?
