Despite everything that had happened between us, the level of comfort we both felt around each other now, I wasn’t positive I wanted to have that conversation with him. I didn’t know if I wanted him to know.
Correction: I wassureI didn’t want to tell him. My pride might not survive it. Then I’d have to try and suffocate him to preserve what I had left, and nothing was in my favor for that going well so…
I either needed to ask someone else about it, or I needed to move on and pretend it hadn’t happened.
Right. Super easy.
“I’m sure you’ve seen more than this, but I’ve only seen a sprinkle before,” I told him quietly, like if I spoke too loud I’d break the effect it had. “I want to go out there.”
I could feel his breath on my neck, all soft and slow. “Go out there then,” Alex said, for some reason reminding me of how I’d fallen asleep on the couch the night before and how he’d woken me up by crouching beside me, just starting to slip his arm under my back like he’d been about to pick me up.
I’d walked up the stairs myself, but it would have been an experience.
A real nice experience.
Dammit, I needed to stop or find some other way to get past this weird shit going on in my chest now every time I thought about him. He’d been in and out of the house a lot; when he was around, he’d be in the room he’d called his office with the door closed for long periods of time. When the door was open, he was on his big, two-screen computer with a pen in his mouth, jotting down notes in a notebook. He’d come out in the evenings and make something for dinner. So far he’d made burgers and spaghetti, and one night he’d made the best carbonara I’d ever had in my life, even though I’d only eaten my own. I had only teased him a little about how he knew how to cook and had kept it a secret. And every night, we’d sat there and watched a movie together while we ate. Not awkwardly, just quietly. Then sometimes, afterward, we talked about it.
We’d watched one of the Electro-Man movies, and he hadn’t had much to say about that one, but the rest we discussed, mostly talking about all the shit we didn’t like about it.
I was pretty sure we both had a hell of a lot on our minds that neither one of us wanted to talk about.
Fine by me.
With so much time to kill, I had started rebuilding my website under another business name from the very comfortable location of the living room downstairs. Even though I was fairly confident the cartel hadn’t found out anything about my banking information thanks to my paranoia which led me to use the browser window that didn’t save any of my history, and never staying logged into anything, I had decided to play it on the safe side and buy a new URL for my business. The one and only breadcrumb I would have left them were the workbooks and notebooks I used with my students. Would they be able to figure out what I did? Where I got students from? I hadn’t thought about that issue until recently. Would they eventually be able to figure me out? IP addresses could be tracked down, and I just wasn’t sure if it was worth launching the site, so even though I was working on it, I was going to sit on it until I thought it through.
Having to think about the long-term effect of things seemed to be the story of my life now.
“I don’t have a waterproof jacket or boots,” I told him. I’d already been trying to figure out how to make it work since I’d been standing there. I’d tossed my old pair of shoes when they’d fallen apart after I had washed them, and I wasn’t going to go out there with the nice heels he’d gotten me.
Alex huffed, and I glanced over my shoulder to find him leaving the kitchen, sleep pants low on his hips…
The son of a bitch didn’t have a shirt on.
His waist was trim, shoulders broad. His rib cage tapered perfectly as a segue from one part of his body to another. His skin looked deceptively soft.
I needed to calm down and quit checking him out before he noticed and got suspicious. We both knew I found him attractive—who the hell didn’t? It wasn’t some shameful secret. That didn’t mean I had to be so obvious about it.
Subtle could be my middle name. I had this.
I was in the middle of washing my bowl when he came back into the kitchen, a T-shirt straining across his shoulders and chest, holding…
“The boots are too big, but I brought you three pairs of thick socks; if you tie them tight enough, you’ll manage. This jacket is more waterproof than the one you’ve been using; zip it up and you’ll be fine,” he said as he lowered a pair of brown leather boots with fleece lining on the floor beside one of the chairs of the breakfast table. Then he draped a big jacket over the back of the same chair before lifting his face and giving me a wary expression. “What?”
“Nothing,” I told him defensively, trying to hide the way my little heart swelled at his kind gesture. “Thanks, Alex.” I was pretty sure my voice came out normal.
Maybe not.
He frowned. “You need some boots your own size.”
“I know, getting my credit card sent was a pain in the ass, but it’s on its way,” I confirmed. It had taken a while, but getting my banking sorted was a huge weight off my back. I’d run out of groceries already, but one morning, I’d found the refrigerator and pantry restocked. The cereal I usually ate sitting there, looking at me. I’d tried to ask him how much I owed him, but he’d changed the subject by asking me if I’d heard from the legal department yet.
I hadn’t.
“I’ll survive until then as long as you keep letting me borrow your things,” I told him.
Alex grunted, and I finally noticed just how tired he seemed. There weren’t dark circles or bags under his eyes, but it was something about his energy that was just off.
“Are you good?” I asked. “You look a little ragged. Did you wake up at the crack of dawn?”
