“Better?” he asks.
I squeeze his arm, ignoring his tight muscles and the way my palm tingles from touching him. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“You shouldn’t be.”
“I can build a fire. Even a fire that doesn’t start with a blowtorch. I can figure out how to use a snow shovel. I can live for a week on three chicken breasts and a bag of mandarins, but…I’m glad I’m not alone.”
“You don’t have to say that. Especially since you don’t have much of a choice.”
“I’m a fighter,” I tell him. “I’m a survivor. I’d be okay. I’d figure out what I needed to figure out. And I’m very, very grateful right now that I don’t have to survive on my own. Thank you. For being here. And being my friend.”
He keeps staring at the fire, a muscle in his jaw ticking behind the scruff growing over his chin and cheeks.
“And I’m sorry you got stuck,” I add quietly.
He likes the holidays. He doesn’t see his family often.
He’s missing his time with them, and that feels wrong.
His voice is even softer than mine when he says, “I’m not.”
Hello, Mr. Overprotective.
That kind of sentiment from a man usually makes me twitch. I’ve had to take care of myself for so long that I get triggered at the idea that someone else thinks they need to take care of me. Especially since most of the men who’ve claimed they want to take care of me have let me down one way or another.
But I don’t tense or get irritated when Cash does it.
Probably because we made friends over text before we really got to know each other in person. I’d met him at a party at his Malibu mansion a few months before I needed a new living situation, but it was obvious when I messaged him about rentinghis pool house that he didn’t remember who I was, so it was like starting over.
Waverly told me later she hadn’t reached out herself the way I thought she had. She’d run into Beck Ryder while she was celebrating the Fireballs’ World Series win with Cooper, and their conversation turned to me, and when Waverly mentioned I’d just had a highly uncomfortable situation with a landlord and had moved into a hotel but needed more stability and better security than a hotel could offer, Beck said he knew a guy with a pool house that was set up like an apartment.
She didn’t realize he was talking about Cash until after I’d moved in.
And then she’d laughed and laughed and said it was a good thing I’d be traveling a lot.
He has parties all the time, she told me.You’d never get any rest if you were both always home regularly.
Not surprising. I met him the first time at one of his parties. The gossip pages call him the Hollywood Heartbreaker. Always hosting or crashing a party. Different model or actress or singer on his arm at every red carpet. Unless he takes his mom or sister.
That’s why they love him so much. Because in addition to always being seen with a newItGirl, he also raves about how much he adores his mom or confesses that he wanted to make his sister’s day by introducing her to some of her favorite people who are definitelynothim.
Just like when I’m thinking I’ve ruined his Christmas, he goes allI’m glad I was here for you so you didn’t have to do this alone.
“I would’ve been okay,” I repeat. “I always am.”
He grunts a nonanswer response.
I should go back to the bedroom.
I should.
But I don’t want to.
Even as an awkward silence falls between us, I don’t want to.
However, that’s where my journal is.
And I’m not here to secretly fawn over my landlord.
