“For what?!” she asked, barely opening her mouth because she had morning breath.
“For the morning ogling, you don’t think you get to see that level of cuteness for free, do you?”
“I wasn’t—” she started to argue, but his brow lifted in challenge, and she knew that he knew she’d been staring at him.
“I haven’t brushed my teeth.” Again, she spoke, barely opening her lips.
Niko grinned the grin that did funny things to her insides. “Neither have I. Double negative. Cancels each other out.”
“That’s not how that works.” She shook her head.
“One way to find out.” He leaned down and pressed his mouth to hers. She squirmed and tried to get away, giggling and doing her best to block it, but then his hand cupped her face, and the energy shifted. It was that damn jigsaw. His lips touched hers, he locked in, and she was powerless, it just worked.
After they’d lain together and talked last night, they’d gotten up and brushed their teeth right before bed and also had more water so neither had morning breath, but as Niko’s hand moved up Tiana’s body and the ache that she’d felt in certain areas was replaced by heat, she wondered if it would have bothered her even if they had.
It wasn’t until her alarm went off that reality crashed back down.
“I have to go,” she said, extricating herself with more self-discipline than she thought she possessed. “I have to teach.”
He got out of bed with her, and when he started to follow her into the bathroom, she turned to face him. “Where are you going?”
His face instantly went wide-eyed and innocent. “I’m gonna help you take a shower and get ready. I thought you might be sore, so you might need help reaching the more delicate areas.”
How he could say that with a straight face and so earnestly was honestly impressive. She really did feel bad for whichever woman fell for him because he was the definition of a heartbreaker, and he was going to get away with murder. And also, how would the woman ever be on time?
“No,” she stated firmly. “I don’t need help.”
“Okay, well, I’ll be there just in case you need an extra set of hands.” He lifted up his hands as innocent as could be.
As tempting as it was, as much as she’d love for him to shower with her, she knew she would be late if she did.
“Stay!” she instructed before grabbing her bag turning, and walking into the en-suite bathroom.
As she closed the door, she heard him say, “I’ll be here if you need me.”
The shower was supposed to be quick, efficient, and purely functional. It was the same every day: lather, rinse, shave, repeat. But that morning, the water on her skin felt different. She couldn’t stop smiling. Every echo in the tile—every plink and drip—seemed to reverberate with the memory of Niko’s hands on her, the way he’d grinned against her mouth, and the way he’d made her feel like a person with a body, not a vessel made to power through the day.
She pressed her forehead to the cool glass, relishing the contrast of cold and heat, and let the steam swirl around her until her reflection disappeared. Was this what relationships were supposed to feel like? Fun and playful? She tried to summon up memories of her and Brock, of what it had been like at the beginning when things were, relatively speaking, good. She couldn’t remember ever laughing with him in the morning. She remembered tension, the feeling of fighting a current to keep up. She remembered being careful, always careful, not to say the wrong thing, not to move the wrong way, not to be toomuch or too little, as if their entire relationship balanced on a pinpoint.
But with Niko, she’d started the day with an “argument” about kissing without brushing teeth first and him “helping” in the shower. He’d yanked her back into bed after “catching” her staring at him. It was uncharted, possibly dangerous, territory for her. Dangerous if she didn’t remember that this was temporary.
She got ready quickly: moisturizer, leggings, sports bra, a black zip-up hoodie with the name of her old climbing gym stitched over the breast. Today was not a hair washing day, so she just wrapped her curls up in a messy bun on her head, and she was ready to go. She reached for the bathroom door and hesitated. She’d never had a morning after or a walk of shame because she’d never had a one-night stand, but even if she had, she would never allow her choices to be something to be ashamed of. So why, as she was about to return to the bedroom, was her heart beating like a hummingbird of nerves in her chest? Was it possible to feel giddy and cautious at the same time?
Whatever the reason, she needed to get over herself. She took a deep breath, stepped out and saw that Niko was no longer in the room. All that buildup for nothing. Her phone was face down on the nightstand, vibrating aggressively. She picked it up and scrolled through. “Fuck.”
“What? What’s wrong?” Niko’s voice was low and deep.
She turned and saw him in the doorway. He wore a pair of ancient gray sweatpants slung low on his hips. He looked like a walking Calvin Klein ad, or maybe the man in every fantasy she’d had since she was old enough to know what a fantasy was. He looked so sexy it was hard to remember what she was upset about.
But she refused to be distracted. “Nothing. It’s fine.”
He leaned against the doorway, arms crossed, watching her. “You sure?”
Wow. When a man with that chest and those arms crossed them, it was quite a sight.
Tiana wasn’t used to sharing what was going on in her life with anyone. She’d always handled things totally on her own. She’d gotten used to keeping her anxiety private, putting on the armor, and arranging her face so no one could see the cracks. But Niko’s gaze was open, patient, and the opposite of invasive. But the few days she’d spent with him, even under the guise of a ‘fake relationship,’ were better than the loneliness she’d felt for years, decades, her entire life.
She hesitated, still holding the phone in white-knuckled fingers. “It’s just… the studio. I had two dropouts, and now Brock and Gianna are in my class.” She said it flatly, like she was reciting a weather report. She tried to shrug it off, but the truth of it was a stone in her gut. “It’s not a big deal. I mean, it’s not like I didn’t see this coming. I knew they were on the waitlist, so it was inevitable.”
