He broke, and I knew instantly I was in trouble. He ended up with solids and moved straight into his shots. After four in a row, I started sweating. After six, I bit back a growl of frustration. When the seventh dropped, I knew it was over.
The 8 ball was perfectly lined up. A toddler could have made the shot. He called the pocket, his expression intent and focused, but not gloating, and sank it cleanly.
“I didn’t even get to play!”
His ice-blue eyes warmed as he turned toward me. Gently, he took my cue and hung both of them on the wall, then gathered the balls from the pockets and racked them for the next players.
Turning back, his hands slipped into his pockets again as he leaned against the table. “How about you take a bath first, then you can pick out the movie.”
“You’re letting me use your bathtub anyway? I didn’t win, though.” As much as I wanted to protest, I really wanted the bath, and I’d take it if he was offering.
“Come on. I’ll show you where the towels are.”
“I’m not cuddling with you,” I warned him.
His chuckle made my stomach flip.
His bathtub had a fireplace.
There was also a sound system piping in soft music. I knew this because he’d set up my phone to connect to it, and just for kicks and giggles, I tried it out. Right now, instrumental covers drifted through the room, and I was trying not to fall asleep.
The jets worked the stress and worry out of muscles that had been tight for months, and for the first time in a very long time, I felt completely relaxed.
And then the tears came.
I am not a crier. I’ve always been much better at doing than stewing. But every once in a while, a woman needs to cry. I wasn’t ashamed of it. It just felt foreign to me, one more foreign thing in a long line of things.
My chuckle was watery as I remembered how awful I was at caring for Alanna when I first got custody of her. I had no idea how to change a diaper, what formula to buy, or how to feed or hold a baby. All of it had been brand new and sudden. My sister and I were close enough in age that I’d never really taken care of a baby before, or even spent much time around kids.
As a result, I was terrible at it. Alanna was kind enough to be patient with me. In fact, I would swear she was secretly laughing, or that my sister was watching from heaven, laughing right along with her. I could almost see her throwing Watch Piper parties up there, complete with popcorn and snacks, heckling me one minute and cheering me on the next.
My smile slowly faded.
I really missed her.
I used a cup and fresh water to rinse my hair, since Riggs had added oil to the bath and I didn’t want it leaving my hair filmy. Then I leaned my head back and tried to think of nothing for a while.
After my bath,I grabbed a snack, and we settled in on the couch to watch a movie. Suspiciously, everyone else was absent. I didn’t know who he’d had to bribe to make that happen, but I suspected it was all of them.
Or… maybe something else was going on. I wasn’t sure. Normally, I would’ve just asked, but this thing between Riggs and me was delicate. It felt like we were walking a high wire, and I was trying not to fall off, or push him off either, for… reasons.
“You okay way over there?” Riggs asked.
I shrugged.
“I believe you’re breaking the terms of our agreement,” he teased.
In response, I dragged more pillows into the space between us, stacking them like a barrier, and he laughed. I felt like I was five all over again, trying to stay away from the male species because they had cooties. Except the problem wasn’t cooties. It was appeal, and my mate had it in spades.
I did my best to look unaffected, but Riggs, being the very smart man he was, wasn’t buying it.
Halfway through the movie, I noticed the pile of pillows between us had thinned to a suspicious degree. We were down to only a few. I shot him a glare, but he just smiled and kept his attention on the movie.
The next time I glanced over, they were gone.
“Where are the pillows?”
“I’m not sure what you mean, Piper.”
