Probably for the same reason I can’t stop dreaming about her. It all has to be a by-product of spending so much time around her this past week. Time where we were getting along, and I found myself looking forward to seeing her. Anticipating talking with her. Teasing her without the goal of making her mad enough to walk away.
Sloane moves around me, and her arm brushes my shoulder as she walks to her front door. “Yeah. Like the proper way to store an email, so I don’t lose the pertinent information it contains.”
The key turns in the lock, and her door swings open. She glances at me over her shoulder, toying with the idea of inviting me in. This would be new territory for us. Me inside her home without Eric there. And I feel it. Her brain whirling, trying to decide if it’s worth it to shift us out of the weird space between what we are now and what we could be.
A faint light spills out from inside of the house, framing Sloane’s silhouette in the doorway. Illuminating every curve of her body and calling up the memory of a girl I never got to know.
The bright fluorescent light spilling from the cracked door of the bathroom connected to her dorm room, bathing her body in its warm glow. Her drunkengiggles slipping under my skin as I help her to bed. The sheets smell like her—tropical fruit and the nectar of the sweetest flowers. I kiss her forehead and make her promise to call me in the morning.
“Dominic,” Sloane calls from the open door. “I asked if you wanted to come in?”
My feet start moving toward her before my brain fully processes the question. I take the steps two at a time, eyes glued to the bare soles of her feet that are now padding across the hardwood floors that run throughout the entire first floor. Closing and locking the door behind me, I absorb every detail available to me. Greedy for a glimpse into the sanctuary of a woman who still feels like a mystery to me sometimes.
This isn’t the home she shared with Eric. She moved out of there a year after his death and bought this place. And it’s everything you would expect the home of an interior designer to be—open and airy with perfectly coordinated colors and textures. Furniture that’s stylish but functional. And just the right amount of pillows and throw blankets.
It feels like her.
A little too much like her. Almost like she never shared a home with another person at all. I grit my teeth and run through a thousand different scenarios that could make the glaring absence of Eric in this house sit right with me and come up empty. Yeah, it’s been four years but is that really enough time to just completely erase someone from your life?
Is it enough time for you to be thinking about kissing her throat or dreaming about tasting her on your desk?
I close my eyes and count to ten, hoping for a calm that refuses to come. It makes no sense for me to be judging Sloane on how she chooses to represent her husband in her home after letting my mind go off the rails for the last week. The fact of the matter is, Sloane is single. And her choosing to put away her past to make room for a different kind of future is exactly what Eric would have wanted for her. I’m just glad he isn’t hereto see bastards like James Robinson drooling all over her, and I’m even more thankful he won’t ever know how close I am to breaking every rule in the book whenever I’m around his wife.
Although, sometimes a part of me can’t help but feel like he broke them first.
Sloane’s phone is plugged up and charging on the island when I finally make it into her kitchen. She’s tapping her nails on the white quartz counter and watching me with faint curiosity as I take a seat on one of the stools across from her.
“I like your place,” I say, meeting her curious gaze with my own questioning one.
“Thanks. It’s kind of weird having you here. You know, without Eric.”
I rest my arms on the island. “I was just thinking that too. But it feels slightly less weird since he was never—”
“Here,” she cuts in, tilting her head to one side. “Yeah. I suppose that does make it a little less weird.”
“Might also help that you’re being nice to me these days,” I tease and get rewarded with the gift of her smile.
“I don’t think I’m the one who has a problem with being nice.”
I arch a brow. “Are you suggesting I’m the one with the problem?”
“No,” she says coolly. “It’s a fact, not a suggestion. You’re always starting with me. From the moment I started coming around, you had an issue. If I wasn’t so delightful, I would thinkIwas the problem.”
“Maybe your delightfulness is the problem,” I state simply, spine stiffening at how close the statement is to revealing my true issue with Sloane. The one I won’t ever say out loud because it won’t change a damn thing. Not for the better anyway.
“I see.” And for a second, I think she does. Her eyes sparkle with a serene sense of clarity that stops my heart from across the room. “You thought everyone was going to like me more. That my delightfulness, asyou put it, would make Eric and Mal think twice about the whole hanging out with a grumpy, broody asshole thing?”
“Hilarious. Please tell me you’re considering a career in comedy if interior design ever falls through.”
Her lips roll inward as she considers me. “I’m only halfway joking, Dominic. Did you think I was trying to edge you out or something? That’s the only reason I could ever come up with for your…”
The sentence breaks off as Sloane’s attention is pulled to her phone, which has just switched back on. I fully expect her to move over to it, send me the email Alex never lost, and push me out of her door, but she surprises me by turning those thoughtful hazel eyes back on me.
Eyes that have probably glazed over numerous times trying to figure out why I didn’t like her when everyone else did. I never knew she thought about it, and the admission almost makes me want to tell her the truth. Jumbled words crowd on the tip of my tongue, ready to push their way through, but I swallow them down. She isn’t ready for that and probably never will be.
“No. I didn’t think you were trying to edge me out. Eric and Mallory have been my family since we were in diapers. A random girl wasn’t going to change that.”
Sloane flinches at the use of the word random. I get it. It doesn’t even begin to capture what she was to Eric and Mal. Or me. I clear my throat. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t the right word.”
