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“We’ve been in touch with your father’s contact,” Dev said, referencing the emergency number my dad gave me before leaving the country. “We don’t want to take any next steps without speaking with Cillian, lest he thinks we’re kidnapping you,” Dev nudged me with a smile, referencing my initial thoughts when we drove here, “so we’re all going to spend the night here.”
The small one, Wren, jerked her head in Dev’s direction, and I could almost see her ears perking up at the information. She looked at her girlfriend with a betrayed expression. “Et tu, Brute? You didn’t tell me we were spending the night.”
“I was literally in the process of doing that,” Bex grumbled with a frown, even as she pulled Wren further into the circle of her arms.
“Sleepover!” Wren clapped her hands as she hopped on her toes, way too excited by the concept of being around a group of criminals and a woman being hunted down.
Chapter 6
Rory
Ames and Wrenknew how to throw a sleepover. At least, from my limited experience - namely, this singular experience - the sleepover was successful. Wren doled out blankets according to our “vibes” while Ames popped popcorn. I ended up with a forest green fuzzy blanket from Wren and a giant bowl of buttered popcorn from Ames, sharing both with Dev as he settled beside me on the couch. Ames crawled into Alex’s lap without prompting, curling into his chest as Wren settled with her feet tucked under her girlfriend’s legs, Bex’s arm thrown around Wren’s knees.
Ames and Wren forced the three badasses in the room to spend the rest of the afternoon and well into the night watching a handful of 90s and early 2000s rom-coms, classics I hadn’t seen in years, and never with a group of women. It was…different, watching the movies with women who swooned and cried rather than watched with barely restrained grumbles or constant questions, which had been my experience in the past watching movies like these with the bodyguards that always surrounded me. It was different, and not in a bad way.
Ames and Bex entertained us by quoting most ofShe’s the ManandClueless. The phrase “as if” coming from Bex’s stoicface was something I would have never expected. Her girlfriend clearly felt the same, the tears from laughing evident on her face by the end of the movie. Wren laughed so hard that the black cat - who had settled on her lap at some point, purring contentedly until finally falling asleep - jumped off of her with an angry meow.
The biggest surprise of the night, however, was Alex quoting the original proposal fromPride and Prejudice, eyes on Ames as he asked Ames to end his agony alongside Matthew Macfadyen on the screen.
“It’s Ames’s favorite movie,” Dev whispered in my ear in explanation, “so he’s watched it half a dozen times in the last six months. He does this every time we watch it.”
But knowing that Alex had done this before didn’t change the sincerity in his words, the emotion from him and his fiancée suffusing the room even more palpable than that on the screen.
The tension only broke when Wren stood up to sing with Heath Ledger in10 Things I Hate About You, Dev joining in with back-up vocals. The fun lasted until midnight, when Wren started yawning on the couch, eyes drifting closed before the credits rolled.
“Time for bed, little bird.”
“Trying to tempt me to your bedroom like old times, huh, babe? Maybe you can push me in the pool, just for nostalgia’s sake.”
Bex just rolled her eyes with an indulgent smile, pulling her girlfriend out the French doors in the back of the house. I watched their figures walk the lit-up pathway to the pool house I could barely see in the distance.
Ames and Alex bailed shortly afterward, Alex whispering in Ames’s ear until her cheeks were lit with pink. She bid us a quick goodnight, hurrying up the stairs with Alex close on her heels, his footsteps speeding up to match hers.
“And then there were two,” Dev murmured in an ominous voice, forcing a laugh out of my throat. He smiled at the sound, eyes lighting up much more than they should over a laugh, before he stood up, holding his hand out to help me from the couch. “Let’s go, Red. I’ll show you to the guest room.”
He led me up the stairs, giving me a quick tour, pointing out Alex and Ames’s bedroom, Alex’s office, the hallway bathroom, and finally, the guest room. It was a large bedroom, sparse in the way most of the bedrooms were, with a king-sized bed and a dresser.
Dev reached into the dresser, pulling out a t-shirt and a pair of athletic pants that looked similar to the ones he wore, tossing them onto the bed. “You can wear these to sleep in. In the morning, I’m sure Ames will let you raid her closet for more clothes.”
I opened my mouth to thank him for the clothes, but what blurted out was the question that had been floating in the back of my mind, my words stopping Dev in his tracks as he went to leave.
“Where are you going to sleep?”
It was clear there weren’t any other places to sleep in the house. While there were more rooms on the second floor, one was devoted to Alex’s office and another to the two cats I’d seen slinking around the house, a litter box and a giant cat tree taking up most of the space. There were at least two other bedrooms, but neither had a bed, both spaces mostly empty, as if waiting to be filled.
The guest room was obviously Dev’s, a place he likely used when he spent the night here. His clothes were in the dresser, but the room also smelled like him, like fresh laundry and musk, telling me he spent enough time in here to mark it as his own.
“I’ll just sleep downstairs -”
I shook my head, surprising us both when I cut him off mid-sentence, “No, you should sleep here. I’m not going to take your bed from you.”
Dev frowned, the expression odd on his face after seeing his smiles all day. “I’m not going to make you sleep on the couch, Red. I know I might not have made the greatest impression this morning, but I’m not -”
“No, it’s not that.” I shook my head, wanting to make sure he knew I didn’t hold any sort of ill impressions of him after this morning. “You saved my life. I just meant…” I trailed off, regretting my idea now that I had to say it out loud.
I fluttered my hand toward the bed, groaning aloud at how uncomfortable this interaction had become. Leave it to me to turn a rational offer -we were both adults, we could share a king-sized bed platonically- into something that sounded like an awkward proposition.
I took a deep breath, hoping the flush I felt on my chest and cheeks was hard to see in the dim light of the small lamp on the nightstand. I pushed out my final words, allowing them to drop between us in a clear, level voice. “I just meant you could sleep here, with me.”
