He plays rock.
Predictable. I’m glad I went with paper.
“Best four out of seven,” he announces.
“Cooper.”
“I like you and I want to do this again.”
My heart soars at the same time my brain whispersyou know better. Don’t do it. I lick my lips and study his intensely serious blue-green gaze. “Play rock-paper-scissors?”
“No. See you. Talk to you. Sleep with you. Laugh with you. Try to impress you and utterly fail and then try again. Catch you writing songs in the middle of the night and sit with you until you’re done and then toss you over my shoulder and carry you to bed and eat your pussy and bang you in the shower and then sing you to sleep.”
Yes, please, my vagina agrees.
“You’re busy. I’m busy. But I want more time with you whenever I can get it. However I can get it.I like you.”
This. This Cooper.
This is the man I fell hard for eight years ago. The one who’ll put his heart on his sleeve and say what he wants.
Until he disappears.
Nothing’s changed.
Both your lives are too hectic for this.
He just wants your pussy for his game.
“One day at a time, Waverly.” His eyes bore into mine, and there’s a thread of pain in his voice, like he knows what I’m afraid of and he feels it too. “Can we take this one day at a time and see where we go? No press. No publicity. No pressure. Just—I like you.”
I like you.
It’s such a simple sentiment, but I can’t remember the last time I heard those words when someone was talking aboutme.
Not the made-up superstar Waverly.
The sometimes disastrous, not-quite-sure-where-she-came-from, cat-loving, reality-TV-watching Waverly who just wants to believe she’s loved for everything she is underneath the glitz and glamour.
And he’s said it several times tonight when I haven’t said it back once. “I like you too,” I whisper.
His shoulders sag, and then I’m being strangled in the best kind of hug.
It’s a full-body, wrapped-up, Cooper-scented hug that makes me feel safe in ways I haven’t felt since my mom was alive. It’s theI’ve got youhug and theyou’re specialhug and theI’m memorizing how this feels so when we’re apart, I can close my eyes and come back here and feel you despite the distancehug.
And I hope I’m giving half as good of a hug back as he’s giving to me.
“One day at a time,” he repeats quietly.
I squeeze harder.
“Can I carry you upstairs and eat your pussy now?” he adds.
Only Cooper.
“Yes,” I manage through a very aroused laugh.
He shifts, and then I’m being tossed over his shoulder as he heads for the stairs.
