She stops, and we lock eyes. She sees me, I see her, and the whole world stops.
“Miss Ella?” she asks, bewildered.
Panic detonates in my skull. “I—uh—hi—bye!”
I spin around so fast I nearly trip over a pair of boots, sprint down the hall barefoot, crash back into the bedroom, and slam the door with enough force to wake the dead. Or, in this case, Cole.
He jolts upright, hair sticking everywhere, voice raspy with sleep. “What? What’s going on?”
I’m plastered against the door, panting, eyes wide. “She’s here,” I whisper.
“Who?”
“Aria.”
His expression shifts from sleepy confusion to dawning horror. “Oh,” he mumbles. “Oh.”
Then there’s a knock on the bedroom door. A tiny, familiar, sweet, terrifying knock. “Daddy? Yaya dropped me off.”
I freeze. Oh no. Oh no no no.
I dive back under the comforter and flop into the exact position I woke up in, heart pounding so hard I swear the mattress shakes.Cole sits up, rakes a hand through his hair, and whispers, “Stay here.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” I mutter back. “I’m not doing the walk of shame past a child.”
He shoots me a look—half-amused, half-exasperated—then swings out of bed, pulling on the nearest pair of sweatpants.
His voice softens at the door. “Coming, sweetheart.”
I bury my face in his pillow. It smells like him, and everything we did last night. My entire body goes hot.
The door opens, and I hear Aria’s small voice rush in immediately. “Daddy! Yaya let me have waffles AND ice cream for breakfast.”
“She did, did she?”
“Uh-huh. She said it’s okay on weekends because she’s the fun one.”
Cole chuckles. “I’ll have to talk to her about that.”
“Are you sick? Your door was locked.”
“No. Just… sleeping.”
“Was that Miss Ella I saw?”
I shove the comforter over my head and pray for death. Cole tries to deflect. “Uh—give me a sec and then we’ll make breakfast, okay?”
“Okay!”
She skips away, humming. Cole closes the door, turns back to me, and smirks. How the hell is he finding this amusing?
“So,” he murmurs, leaning against the wall with his arms folded, “you were sneaking out?”
Heat floods my cheeks. “No. I was… adjusting.”
“Adjusting?” he repeats, eyebrows raised.
I sit up, hair wild, blanket clutched to my chest. “Yes. Adjusting. To life. To choices. To decisions I may or may not have made under the influence of tequila and questionable judgment.”
