More sounds fell from my lips as I made a mess of his bed, but I didn’t care about that either. I toppled forwards into the pillow, half laughing, half who the fuck knew what. Sam caught me before I face-planted and turned me around. His eyes seemed to flicker as he stared at me. “All right? You’re okay?”
I offered him a dazed smile and shrugged. Because I was okay.
For now.
17
Sam
Life was weird. One minute I was angsting over, well, everything. The next I was being swept off my feet by Micah at any given opportunity. Sometimes literally—he’d developed a thing for swinging me around the kitchen—other times, it was more subtle.
Like the day he finished his book and bounced into my bathroom to tell me all about it. “I wanna be in my sixties and not give a fuck.”
“Give a fuck about what?”
“Anything.”
I poked my head around the shower curtain. “You’ll have to be more specific. I never actually got through that book. I was spoiled byTheHotel New Hampshire.”
Micah shot me a blank look.
“One of his other books.”
“Oh,” he said. “Well I liked this one. It was weird as fuck, and I was kinda rooting for Billy to hook up with a bloke, but I liked that he didn’t too. Does that make sense?”
“That you appreciated the fact that a queer character wasn’t shoehorned into every possible facet of their sexuality? Yes, it makes sense. You’d still be bi if you’d only been with women, right?”
“Yeah. I definitely like it all.”
I tried to contain my smirk. There was something truly fucking erotic about knowing that Micah saw the possibility of attraction in everyone, even if the mere thought of him with someone else made me want to bleach my brain.Needy?
Totally.
“Uh, Sam?”
“Hmm?” I blinked to find Micah closer than he’d been before, hovering by the bathtub, frowning. “What? What is it?”
“Can I get in the shower with you?”
“Of course.” I stepped back to make room. “You don’t have to ask.”
Micah stripped his clothes and climbed into the shower. The en suite to my room was the most modern room in the flat, complete with a raindrop shower head that was wide enough to keep us both wet and warm. Micah backed me against the tiles and wrapped his arms around me. Jitters danced under his smooth skin, but his stance was relaxed, and with his face buried in my neck, I couldn’t gauge his breathing under the hot spray. Was he agitated? Or just horny? Over the last week, I’d struggled to tell the difference. Subtle shifts in Micah’s personality had thrown me for a loop. No longer on the sullen side of quiet, he was louder, chattier, and come the evening... drinking. Not a lot, but it was so brand new to me I didn’t know what to make of it.
Maybe he’s just happy.
If only. But, alas, nothing about Micah was ever that simple. When his mood was up, I loved hearing him laugh as though the world wasn’t pressing down on him. When he was like this, he scared me. His moods were giving me whiplash. I couldn’t imagine how it felt for him—to be so carefree one moment and riddled with anxiety the next. It was as if the lid to his emotions had been lifted and they were all escaping at once, and the worst thing about it was he seemed to have no idea.
I held him until the water ran cold. Then he blinked a slow smile at me, climbed out of the shower, and wandered off. I caught up with him a few minutes later. He was on the couch, dressed, hair still dripping, towel in an uncharacteristic heap on the floor. I made tea and dumped it on the coffee table before flopping down beside him. “What are you doing today?”
“Hmm?” Micah glanced up from flipping cutely through his book. “Oh, I dunno. What time is it?”
“Nine. Do you have clients? I thought you’d be gone when I woke up.”
“I rescheduled my morning.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “I wanted to finish my book.”
