I should have been usedto the idea of us sharing a bed by that night, after we’d already done it last night, but when I walked into the room and found Lilah sitting at the foot of the bed in just her pajamas, her hair still damp from her shower, my brain short-circuited for a moment.
I guess it became apparent pretty quickly that I was staring because she narrowed her eyes at me. “Problem?”
I certainly couldn’t tell her that the sight of her sitting on my bed—our bed—like that was making me want to kiss her more than I’d ever wanted to before, so I said the first thing I could think of.
“Are those strawberries?” I asked dumbly. She was in a light pink pajama set that was covered in cartoon strawberries with smiley faces all over them.
She narrowed her eyes. “You have a problem with my strawberry friends?”
“Of course not,” I said. “I just wasn’t prepared to be stared at all night by your clothes.”
Lilah threw one of the decorative pillows at me. I caught it one-handed and tossed it onto the chair. “You’re just jealous you don’t have fun pajamas.”
“I have great pajamas,” I said defensively.
She looked pointedly at my Hartwell Hockey T-shirt (I had to improvise since I usually slept shirtless) and flannel pants. “Sure. If by great you mean regular and boring.”
“They’re minimalist.”
“They’re sad.”
“Functional.”
She grinned. “Grandpa.”
I just grinned and plugged my phone in while she crawled into bed first, immediately pulling the comforter up to her chin like a burrito. I climbed in beside her, careful to keep a respectable distance like last night—not that it had done us any good.
She tugged the blanket around her shoulders until only her eyes peeked out. “Okay, ground rules.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Again?”
“Rule number one: no blanket stealing.”
“You’re the one who stole the blankets last night.”
“I did not! Now rule number two: stay on your side.”
“Do I need to remind you that you were the one who ended up on top of me last night?”
She sniffed. “So you say.”
“You woke up like that!”
“And how do I know you didn’t pull me on top of you to make it seem like that?”
I blinked. “Literally what would I get out of that? How would I benefit at all?”
She ignored me. “And rule number three: no staring at me while I’m asleep. That’s serial-killer behavior.”
“Only stare at you when you’re awake, got it.”
She flicked off the lamp, leaving only the faint light from the hallway under the door. “Goodnight, creep.”
“Goodnight, menace.”
For a few minutes, the only sounds were the soft hum of the heater and the rustle of sheets as she shifted. When I couldn’t see her, I could feel her more—every small shift, every brush of fabric. The faint rustle when she turned over. The way her knee bumped mine, and neither of us moved away.
Then her voice floated through the dark.
