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Will
The loft was darkand silent when I let myself in around midnight. I did what I always did, which was check on Seb asleep in his bed, then do the same with Abbie upstairs. She was curled up on her side tonight, her long lashes resting on her cheeks, her long blonde hair tumbled about in tangles on the pillow. I collected the baby monitor from the bedside table and paused to get another look at her, releasing a sigh of regret that I’d been such a dick today. None of this was Abbie’s fault. It was my own for spending the entire stretch of my twenties living in a way that proved all her assumptions about me true.
I glanced at the grainy image of my son sleeping alone in his room. Will Kidd: reckless, irresponsible, unreliable. And fucking egotistical. Abbie hadn’t rejectedme. She’d rejected the entire concept of monogamy. Of marriage and a family and a traditional life. Only I could take her philosophy and make it personal.
Soaking in the sight of her one last time, I tiptoed downstairs, stripped off my clothes, and squashed my long frame onto the sofa. I punched the pillow once or twice, hoping that would make me feel better enough to rest, but I couldn’t get comfortable. I tossed and turned to find a position that wouldn’t twist my back before checking the time, but only twenty minutes had passed. I finally started to doze off when I spun to the left and hit the floor, landing on my shoulder heavy enough to send a jolt of pain spearing into my neck.
“Fuck!” I flopped onto my back and stared up at the dark ceiling, too exhausted to even bother pulling myself up onto the couch again.
“Will?”
Abbie’s whisper floated down to me from the top of the stairs.
I lifted my head, but the loft was dark enough that all I could make out was a shadow. “Yeah?”
“I heard a bang. Are you all right?”
I dropped my head back to the rug with a dull thud. “I’m fine,” I muttered, closing my eyes. “Just fell off the sofa. Again.”
There was a long pause before she replied. “You want to come up?”
“You’re not sleeping on the couch, Abs.”
“No. I mean, we can share the bed. There’s room for both of us.”
I smiled without humour into the darkness. “What about the line?”
Silence again, then the quiet creak of Abbie’s footsteps moving away from the stairs.
I was a fucking arsehole, and no level of fatigue or frustration could excuse it. I lay there a moment, hating myself, before I stood, picked up the baby monitor, and dragged my feet to the stairs. I needed to apologise.
Just as I set my foot on the first stair, Abbie reappeared. I looked up at where she stood on the small landing, wearing my shirt again. Her long legs practically glowed in the ambient light of the loft, and her hair was loose, but this time the sight did nothing to my cock. My heart, however, swelled too large for my chest.
She reached out a hand, and I climbed the next few steps to take it. She led me to the bed, and I had to laugh when I saw it.
“Not so much a line as a wall,” she explained with a grin, pointing at the pillows she stacked along the centre of the mattress. “But it should keep us honest for a night.”
I let out a quiet laugh, then lifted her hand to my mouth and kissed her palm. “Thanks, Abs.”
“Don’t mention it.”
I set the monitor on the side table, pulled back the covers, and sank onto the bed with relief. It was so fucking good to have the soft, familiar surface underneath me. I turned to burrow into the pillow, and Abbie’s coconut scent overwhelmed me. I inhaled deeply, letting the comforting fragrance lull me into the kind of sleep my body desperately needed.
Movement on the other side of the pillow wall indicated Abbie was under the covers now, too. I wished I could reach over and take her hand again. My fingers crept closer to the pillows, but I didn’t go any further. My eyes started to drift shut, but a few minutes later, I was still unable to sleep.
“Hey, Ellison?” I whispered.
“Hm?”
“You awake?”
She hummed again in reply.
“I’m sorry about today.”
The mattress shifted as Abbie rolled towards me and moved the pillow between our faces out of the way. She tucked herhands underneath her cheek, and her honey-brown eyes glinted in the dull streetlight streaming in through the window.
“You want to talk about it?”
