Connor walks through the door, a small duffel bag slung over his shoulder and his hand preoccupied by texting on his cell.
When he looks up, his eyes meet mine and then drift down to my nearly naked body, stopping at my blanket, and then right back up.
“Hey beautiful,” I say with a grin.
He barely blinks. “Pants have been invented in this century.” He walks farther into the kitchen to give Rose a light kiss on the cheek. He must add the fact that I’m wearing aliving roomthrow blanket because he says, “I thought you weren’t allowed to have public sex.”
Of course Rose told him about the list. She’ll take any lengths to make sure Lily stays on track in her recovery.
“No one was here. It seemed private enough to me.”
I can’t read Connor’s calm expression, but he looks to Rose. She already shakes her head—as though she knows exactly what he’s about to say. “I told you that you should have clarified for them,” Connor tells her.
“I told you?What are you, one?” Rose snaps, but she’s just pissed she was wrong and he was right.
“Most one-year-olds can barely speak, let alone utter an entire idiom likeI told you so.”
She looks like she wants to slap him. “Why are we dating?”
“Because I asked you out and you said yes,” he tells her with a burgeoning smile. “And you’re madly in love with me.”
“I never said such a thing.”
He replies in French, and I can’t even process the words.
She smacks his arm, and he whispers deeper in her ear, his arm spindling around her waist as he draws her to his chest. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Rose so flushed before.
She puts a hand on his black button-down, making sure there’s space between them. He kisses her on the head and keeps his arm around her, but he turns to me. “The couch isn’t vacant then.” His eyes fall to Rose, waiting for her to offer another solution. Like her bed, but she has solidified to stone.
She’s not one-hundred percent ready to share a bed with a guy, which isn’t a bad thing. I take pride in pissing Rose off, but causing her this type of fear—even unintentionally—makes me feel horrible.
Rose says, “The guestroom in the basement is free. I put clean sheets on the bed the other day.”
Connor nods, accepting the offer, and if he’s disappointed, I can’t tell at all.
I leave Connor and Rose to talk quietly amongst themselves, and I carefully lift Lily in my arms. I successfully carry her back to bed without waking her. She sighs, dreaming peacefully as I place her onto the mattress and tuck the comforter around her.
“Lo,” she says in a sleepy voice and rolls over onto a pillow, hugging it tightly in her arms. I’ve never been so jealous of a damn pillow.
But I let myself smile.
A year ago it would have been another man in her arms.
Oh, how far we’ve come.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
LOREN HALE
We madea deal not to put ourselves in stressful situations. Like the Sunday luncheon with Lily’s parents. Like any communication with my father.
Today I’m breaking that deal.
Lily is busy with Sebastian, pretending to be tutored. I told her I was going to work out with Ryke at the Penn gym, but when I drive to Philadelphia, I make the turn into Villanova. Some of the houses have acres and acres of trimmed lawns, decorative fountains gushing in the front yard and glittering Lamborghinis parked in the driveway—a place more suited for Beverly Hills than the suburbs of Philly. My nerves ricochet every mile down the road.
Before I talked to Connor last night, I had no intention of seeing my father. But I asked him the probability of finding the blackmailer before the information leaked. He told me that I had the same chance as the sun exploding in less than a billion years. I looked it up, and apparently the sun won’t explode for another four to five billion, so in Connor Cobalt’s words—I’m fucked.
Then Lily’s phone vibrated on the nightstand. She was in the shower, so I answered it. An unknown number texted her. The word pounding in my head.Slut.It felt like someone punched me in the ribs, and just before I went into the bathroom to talk to her, I had a sudden impulse to check her other texts.
