I hate that I’m missing seeing them happy together. Bea deserves this so much.
“You two are adorable,” I say, but my voice drops on the last syllable, because something isn’t right.
I look up. Was that footsteps on the floorboards above?
“Daph?” Bea says.
The trap door.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
The trap door is open.
“Gotta go, love you, bye,” I blurt.
I hang up the phone and shove it into my bra a split second before Oliver pokes his head down the stairs.
His hair is disheveled.
The bags beneath his tired hazel eyes have their own bags too.
And his lips are drawn down in a pouty, scowly, angry frown that has my nipples tingling even as apprehension slithers up my neck.
“Who were you talking to?” he says.
I gesture to the TV. “No one. You must’ve heard this.”
His head disappears, and a moment later, his denim-clad legs appear on the ladder.
Then his crotch, which I try to pretend doesn’t exist.
Then his trim torso in a white undershirt. One that fits.
Broader shoulders than Oliver Cumberland should legally be allowed to have.
Thicker neck than Oliver Cumberland should legally be allowed to have too.
And then—there it is.
The scowly, irritated, grumpy face. “You’re watching a nature documentary with a male Australian narrator.”
“Are you sure it’s Australian? I was thinking English. Scottish, maybe?”
He ignores my attempts at deflecting this conversation and stalks to my chair. “What the hell is arocking chair test?”
Fuuuuuuck.
He heard my whole conversation.
Did he hear me call him boring too?
“And who where you talking to?” He’s full-on growling now.
I hate it and like it entirely too much at the same time. “You never have conversations with yourself to rationalize the crazy shit you’re doing?”
He leans over me and pokes his hands between the cushions, his face close enough for me to see the individual whiskers making up his five-o’clock shadow and a scar over his left eyebrow that’s so thin, it’s barely perceptible.
