I nod and his stare intensifies, like he’s trying to peel back layers I don’t even know are there. For the first time ever, his attention makes me squirm, and I back away from it, returning to his boxes of baubles.
He lets me go and we decorate his tree in relative silence, save Rudy’s snoring now he’s grown bored with trying to maul everything.
We’ve been quiet before, mainly after sex until I pass out first, and it’s never been awkward, but it feels heavy now, and I know it’s me. That for once, my instincts are doing the right thing and warning me that this easy companionship is dangerous for my soft heart, and I need to step back before it blows up in my face again.
“Do you want to put Sab’s plastic monstrosity in the annex?”
I’m crouched at the foot of the gorgeous fir Tam chose at the farm. From a few feet up where Rudy can’t reach, he’s decorated it in shades of gold and red, and a few pink things he says are for Esme. Even with the drunken baubles and the angry dog trying to savage every branch, it’s classy and cool, leaving me to assume the tat left in the boxes belongs to someone else.
To Sab, maybe. “You don’t think he’ll want it?”
“Not this year.” Tam eyes me as I rise, bringing us face to face again. “He’s coming back here on Christmas Day, but he has to leave Esme behind.”
My heart sinks, another warning that I’m way too invested in my landlord-slash-hook-up’s family. In hisbrother, who’s been nothing but nice to me. “Do you think they’ll work out a fair custody split?”
“No.”
“No?”
Tam’s expression darkens. With the lights from the tree making his brown eyes gleam, he looks more like the biker he used to be. “It’s going to be all or nothing. I just don’t know which way it’s going to go yet.”
“Sab can’t lose Esme. He’s an amazing dad.”
“I know, but Charmaine’s petty. She’d take her just to win. Just like she’d give her up if she got a better offer than growing the fuck up, and it’s fucking twisted that I have to pray for that for Esme, but it’s all I can do.”
It’s a horrible thing to contemplate when we’ve spent all afternoon turning Tam’s beautiful house into a Christmas grotto his niece might not get to see. There’s Christmas songson the radio again, but they grate on me now, like they’re mocking us. “I’m sorry you have to go through that.”
Tam starts to smile and reach for me. But something stops him. “What’s wrong?”
“Wrong?”
“Yeah. I know you’re tired, but this feels like something else.”
“What does?”
“This.” Tam gestures between us. “Have I pissed you off since this morning?”
A frown creases my forehead as my scratchy, sleep-deprived brain struggles to keep up. We banged this morning. Then he worked, and I caught up on the errands I’ve let slide while I’ve spent every spare moment fucking him on every available surface of the annex.
The annex he owns.
Because he’s my landlord.
“You haven’t pissed me off.”
“Then what is it?”
“I don’t know.” I rough a hand through my hair. “It’s just?—”
Just what? You’re friends that fuck. He never promised you anything else.Just like Skylar, and everyone before him.
“Fuck.” I want to punch something, and it’s a feeling I’m not familiar with, like my words snarling up in my throat. I’m good at talking if people give me the chance. I’m good atbreathing, but apparently, in this moment, I’ve forgotten how.
“Bhodi.” Tam utters my name like it’s the last word he’ll ever say, and it’s too much.
I reel away from him.
Hurt flashes in his gaze, instant and raw. “Hey.” He holdshis hands up. “Whatever it is, you can tell me, okay? We’re friends.”
