“All night long,” I groan, running my hand across my jaw. “Your head okay?”
She nods, but her eyes glaze over, no longer looking at my face but, instead, working her way down the length of my chest.
Isn’t this an interesting development?
I rarely wear a shirt around my house, and now even less so with my injuries and the cumbersome sling I’m forced to wear for another three weeks at minimum, but I’ve never seen Brooke study my body the way she is now.
I lean back, stretching out—oh. so. slowly—for the first time in hours letting my good arm rest under my head. “You good, Brookey? Need some more rest?”
She blinks rapidly. I do a topnotch job of not jumping with victory.
My wife likes my body!
“I think I need to”—she looks around for an excuse to leave the bed—“do something.”
I want to stop her and insist she lie back down. Maybe she’ll let me play with her hair for a little while she dozes before whatever this day will bring. But I remind myself of what a win I’ve already had in the last eight hours, after she insisted we share the bed, even though I was ready and willing to sleep on the floor if it made her more comfortable. Waking up cuddled beside Brooke was a bonus, and I can’t lose focus now in my greed for her affection.
So I grab her wrist, pausing her motion. “Why don’t you take your time getting ready down here, and I’ll just make my protein shake and take it to the roof?”
“You don’t have to do—”
I stop her with a kiss to her cheek. “It’s not a problem, Brooke. Take your time. I’ll make your coffee when you’re ready. But first…”
I fumble out of the bed and into the kitchen, snagging the camera and returning to bed. “Y’all take a look at my beautiful wife,” I tell the audience. Brooke’s morning glow could end up being ninety percent of our content. “Can you believe I get to wake up next to her?”
She covers her face with her hands, but they do nothing to cover her smile. “Owen, I’m gross.”
“Impossible.”Just Waking UpBrooke might very well be my favorite.
“You’reimpossible,” she says, pulling the blanket to cover the lower half of her face. “I haven’t even brushed my teeth yet.”
“They can’t smell your breath, Babe.”
I maneuver back into the bed, one-armed, shuffling my butt until I’m all but sitting in Brooke’s lap, and to my utter delight, she wraps an arm around my chest, resting her chin on my good shoulder.
And as it turns out, I am greedy. Leaning forward, I press a soft kiss to her mouth, morning breath and all. When I pull away, her eyelashes are fluttering as if she’s still waking up so I sneak one more. Just to make sure she knows this is real life.
“You’re so pretty, Babe. Every second.”
She pinches her lips, her closed-mouth grin tilting to the side. “You’re pretty, too, Ruth.” Then she pinches my shoulder, forcing me to squirm away. “But your breath is trash. Get outta here.”
I brush my teeth—maybe I’ll snag another lip lock from it—then make quick work of my morning shake, throw a shirt on, and take the ladder upstairs to the roof, happy to sacrifice the comfort of that bed if it means another day in this game with my wife.
Suite Hearts, Day 7
“So you’ve been here for a week and married for two,” Evan says, sipping a cup of coffee on our roof. “It’s quite the start to a marriage. How do you feel like it’s going?”
I lean back in my lawn chair, letting my hand rest on the back of Brooke’s neck, twisting my fingers in her curls. “In the competition or with theold ball and chain?”
Brooke shakes her head but smiles. She seems just as nervous for this session of marriage counseling as the first, but after a week of patiently letting her work through whatever has been bothering her privately, I’m anxious to talk about how things are going here with Evan and Blaire. Last week she said more than I thought she would, so I’m hoping today will be the same.
“Let’s start with the competition,” Blaire says and winks at Todd, who’s never far away. “What’s Sumer Morrison like? Is her voice as incredible in real life as it is on the albums? Who’s she dating—”
Brooke surprises me with a laugh. “We haven’t interacted with her much, at all. Only during filming, which is really only once a day.”
Blaire looks like she’ll pout without more details until Mrs. Woodhouse shouts from two trailers over. “They haven’t won a single game yet, and I’d bet my money Sumer’s datin’ the director. Right Clyde?”
Clyde nods silently and kisses her cheek, something I’ve noticed he does often when it comes to his wife. Fifty-eight years of solidarity and pure adoration.
