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It has to be the time of night.
“I’m so sorry,” I start to say as I’m trying to force myself to make the turn. But my feet won’t listen. Until I take one look at the man standing there, without a shirt on, and promptly lose my train of thought.
Cole Morgan is standing in front of me, looking like he’s just rolled out of bed.
That’s right. The guy from the courthouse. The one I couldn’t stop staring at.
His hair is tussled, and his eyes are half-open. The sweats he’s wearing hang low on his hips, revealing well-sculpted abs and V-shaped indents. I can’t even look him in the eyes once I get that far. I’m too busy trying to figure out exactly how much he has to work out in order to look like the Greek gods would be jealous of him.
“Casper?” He yawns, rubbing a hand down his stomach and then it drops next to his hip. “What are you doing here?”
“Music,” I croak around a dry throat, surprised I can even make a sound at all. “Your music woke me up.” Finally deciding it’s impolite to stare at the bulge in his pants that definitely isn’t hard, I look up to see mortification on his face.
Meanwhile, I’m still thinking about what kind of monster has to exist in his pants if he’s built like that.
“I sleep hard.” He looks back over his shoulder into the dark house behind him. “The music helps. I’ll turn it off. Sorry to keep you up.”
Having not even realized that Cole lives next door, I don’t know what to say. I mean, after breaking Cassie’s lucky charm, I knew that either he lived close or someone that he knew did. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to help with the box of Cassie’s stuff I dropped. I didn’t know he wasthatclose. Hell, he could have heard me when I’d been in the shower earlier, getting off to the way he smiled at me like the pathetic loser I am.
He doesn’t look surprised in the least to see it’s me knocking on his door, either.
“Thanks.” There’s nothing else to say, so I just nod like an idiot and turn to leave again. What else am I supposed to do?
“Do you want to stay?” His words catch me off guard and have me pausing again. Hesitantly, I turn to see him running a hand through his hair, looking a little like he’s lost and trying to figure out what step to take next. “I feel bad I woke you up or kept you up or whatever I did. I could, I dunno, give you a snack or something to drink?”
Clearly, he doesn’t want to be alone. All the gods in the world know that I want to be around him, so denying both of us what we want would be a mistake I’m not about to make.
“Okay.”
I can’t say no. I mean, no woman in her right mind would. Not when the man is Cole. Realizing a little too late that I am staring at him again, I walk back up the steps. When I go by him, I almost groan. He smells like cologne and sleep. As I step over the threshold into his house, I know without a shadow of a doubt that I want him.
He closes the door but doesn’t try to pass me in the hall. He waits for me to lead the way through the condo that is almost identical to Cassie’s. Just like a reflection in a mirror.
“Do you want a beer?” He sounds like he is still half-asleep, which has me thinking about him. In bed. With me. Just like that, I start to panic, thinking that being in the same house with him doesn’t seem like the best idea. Anywhere there’s a hard surface and no one else around is definitely not a good idea.
Instead of leaving, like I know I should want to do, I take him up on his offer of a beer. “Yeah. Thanks.” When his face lights up at my response, I have to say something about the wheels I can practically see turning in his head. “You know this doesn’t count as a date, right?”
Cole laughs and then takes a sip of the beer he has in his hand. “Keep telling yourself that. You’re gonna fall under my spell, just you see. But if you insist, this can just be a drink among friends. I’m not putting on a shirt, though.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I don’t say a word. Since I have a beer handy, I don’t actually have to say anything because I can do something else with my mouth. And not necessarily the thing I’m thinking about, either. I drink my beer, enjoying the randomness the night has embraced on my behalf. At home, I would never find myself in this situation. Everything in my life is completely organized and all planned out. Yet, here is a man who doesn’t seem to have any plan. From what Sori said at lunch, Cole is in the military and stuck at home for a couple of months. Other than that, he isn’t doing anything at all.
“I’m sorry about your sister.”
I almost choke on my beer at his words. There is zero chance that I’ll ever get used to Cassie being gone. In the two weeks since her accident, I’ve called her phone no less than a dozen times and sent countless texts, all out of habit.
An awkward silence fills the air between us until it’s tangible. There’s nothing I can think of to say to that. I don’t want to ask him if he knew her. I don’t want to pry. I don’t want to break down yet again at the thought of her not being here.
“Thank you.”
There. At least I said something. Anything to distract from the silence.
Cole nods and then finishes his beer. I look down at mine, still half-full. Maybe I should finish it and go to bed. I need to hurry up and get back to my life.
“I don’t know where to go from here. What to do with anything.” The words come out before I can stop them, and then there they are, just sitting there between me and a virtual stranger. The admission is truer than anything I’ve admitted to myself since the accident.
“We could get drunk.” Cole shrugs. “That always seems to make my problems go away. At least until I wake up with a massive hangover.”
Even through the tears and the way my heart is broken over Cassie, he finds a way to make me smile.
