I let her go and motion for her to follow me. She pads along, bare feet soft on the hardwood floor.
In my bedroom, I grab the first long-sleeve black T-shirt from my drawer and hold it out. “Put this on.”
Her brows knit. “Why?”
“No one sees you like this.” My voice comes out low, rough.
No one sees what’s mine.
She hesitates, then looks down at her body and sees what I see. What I can never unsee now.
Blushing, she nods. “Okay. Thank you.”
I turn my back, because if I watch her lift that white shirt over her head, I’ll do something I can’t take back.
She’s happy calling me her boyfriend, but she doesn’t ask anything of me. A real boyfriend will want sex. Lots of it.
The soft rustle stops, and I call out to her, “Fallon?”
There’s only silence.
I spin and see that she’s gone.
I dash outside my bedroom, but the sound of my front door opening and then quickly closing guts me.
Fallon was right to run away. No one is safe with me.
I’ll keep my window unlocked and let her come and go as she pleases. I’ll live with being just the elusive fake boyfriend she leaves plants and cute notes for.
I had thought the plants were stretching toward the light shining in from my window. But now I think they are longing for her, to catch a glimpse of her across the courtyard and into her flat.
I’m reaching for her. On the inside. I am fucking cravingher.
That is not good.
Not good at all.
Chapter 7
Fallon
Iclose my apartment door with my hip, my fingers smoothing across Rhys’s T-shirt until I reach the collar. It’s too big on me, but it feels perfect.
I only imagined his smell by the subtle hints left behind in the hallway, or ones I encountered while inside his place. Now I have it, clinging to this T-shirt.
I press my nose into the fabric and inhale deeply. It’s soap and the kind of musky warmth of male skin from exertion.
My heart does a giddy pirouette in my chest. It’s the chemical reaction to his scent, I am guessing. I actually buzz. It’s soft and gentle, but it’s nothing I’ve ever felt before.
I scoop up Basil from my kitchen and march into my living room.
“Okay,” I whisper, putting the noisy plant on the cocktail table. “Squad meeting, everyone.”
Basil rolls his eyes. He’s always been dramatic, the loudest of the group.
“Don’t give me that look,” I say, plopping onto my sofa. “You’d be starstruck too if you had hormones.”
With this persistent blast of heat under my skin, I realize I haven’t thought about intimacy with another man since my first, awful time with Kosta. In college, I dated a few guys. After they met my father, I never saw them again. I never examined it too closely. Examining things tends to hurt. Then college got to be too much, so I dropped out.
