I wanted to give her one more chance to back out of this if she wanted to.
“Slate, you look like a giant trying to fit on that couch.”
I chuckled and slowly sat up. “All right, you talked me into it.”
I pulled back the blanket and stood up, planning to follow Isla to my room, but she stood there looking at me with an amused expression.
“I never would have thought I’d have to talk you into sleeping with me,” she said, a glimmer of humor in her eyes.
“Very funny.” I gently turned her around, giving her a small push toward the hallway. If she knew what I had been thinking before she’d come out here, she wouldn’t be thinking this conversation was that funny. “Now let’s get that perfect behind of yours to bed.”
She looked at me over her shoulder. “We’re back to calling it a behind, are we?”
I shook my head, smiling at her. “Shhh, you’re going to wake up Wilder and Olivia.”
“I don’t think they’re sleeping,” she said with a sly look on her face.
A soft moan floated through their bedroom door.
I chuckled. “I guess I should have known that.”
I shut the door behind us and turned around to see Isla looking at me. “What side do you want?”
My bedroom was closest to the lamppost outside. In the brighter light, I could now see exactly what Isla had chosen to sleep in. She wore tiny sleep shorts that I wish I could have seen better when I was following her in here, and a tight white tank top with thin spaghetti straps. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and as hard as I tried to get my eyes to move, I couldn’t.
“Uh, Slate?”
Right, she had asked me a question, and I was acting like I’d never seen a girl without a bra on before.
“Um, it doesn’t matter,” I said, finally looking away. “I usually sleep in the middle, so whatever side you want is good with me.”
“Okay.” She climbed in my bed on one side, and I got in on the other side.
I lay on my back trying to quiet my mind and not think about the sexyfriendI had lying next to me. I just needed to go to sleep, and everything would be fine in the morning.
“It’s kind of fun, having a sleepover,” she said into the silence.
I turned to look at her, seeing her on her side facing me. “How so?”
“Sleepovers with friends are the best,” she started to explain. “You eat lots of snacks, maybe watch a show or have a dance party, and then stay up late talking. Haven’t you ever had a sleepover?”
“No,” I said, simply.
“What? Not even with Wilder?”
“No, we were fine with sleeping at our own houses and seeing each other the next day,” I answered, turning on my side to face her as well.
“Well, I’m sure you’ve had moresleepoversthan you can count with your romantic conquests,” she said, insinuating that my track record with being with a lot of women equaled spending the night with them.
“I’m not a sleepover kind of guy,” I informed her.
“Wait, you’ve never slept over at a girl’s place or had a girl sleepover at yours?” she asked, almost as if she didn’t believe me.
“Nope. I told you, it’s a purely physical thing for me,” I reminded her. “Plus, Wilder and I made a rule our freshman year—no sex or sleepovers in our apartment. Olivia became the only exception to that rule once they got together.” Staying the night with a woman after sex had always seemed too intimate. “And spending the night together afterwards runs the risk of strings getting attached.”
She was quiet for a moment before she said, “And you don’t want strings to get attached because of what happened to your dad?”
Whoa. I had not expected her to bring that up. It had been one thing to tell her about my dad through text, but it was another to talk about it in person.
