What the hell?
10
Aiden
The tipof my nose was red by the time I’d made the four-second walk from the cabin to the car, but I was grateful for the cold.
I’d had all night to snuggle up to Carter, and I’d coped with it about as well as I expected to.
Which was to say,not well at all.
If I closed my eyes I could still feel him pressed up against me, the two of us huddling for warmth in our own little cocoon, so much like something out of one of my teenage fantasies that I was still sitting in the car two full minutes later, thinking about it.
I shoved the keys in the ignition and turned the engine over to let it warm up.
Should’ve left a note for Carter. He’d wonder where the hell I was when he got out of the bathroom.
I pulled out my phone, sending him a quick text to promise that I was bringing back breakfast. There was a coffee maker in the cabin, but it wasn’t quite the same as coffee in a takeout cup, fresh from a little bakery. I’d seen one that made my heart sing in town, warm glow and glistening pastries in the window as we drove past, and I was determined to drop in before we left.
All I needed was fifteen minutes away from him to gather my thoughts. Pull myself together. Quell the urge to pounce on him and promise him it’d all make sense after, he’d feel better if he just let himself have what he wanted.
Notme, exactly, but I was convinced now that Carter wanted to try his hand with men. Even if he wouldn’t have known how to say it, or how to ask for it.
I got out my phone again once I was in town, parked a half-block away from the bakery and grateful for the walk.
So I spent all of last night curled up against Carter and it was as magical as I imagined
Morgan:did you have sex
I snorted. Trust Morgan to get straight to the point.
No. I wish.
Morgan:can’t believe you texted me at seven am to tell me you didn’t get laid last night
You’ve been up for hours, you can handle it
Morgan was already halfway through his day when I opened at ten. Flower deliveries came at the ass crack of dawn two or three days a week, so he was up early every morning to keep a regular sleep schedule.
I’d heard of those. They sounded fake.
I tended to be… twenty minutes into my day, or so, when I got to work. My morning routine usually involved rolling out of bed, putting on whatever was acceptably clean, and grabbing a coffee on my way past the shop on the corner. One for Morgan, too.
Apparently, sleeping next to Carter had turned me into an early riser.
I mumbled my way through an order and probably left the pretty barista thinking I was an idiot, but I walked away with pastries and coffee, so I was more than ready to call my trip a success.
Carter was sitting on the edge of the bed when I got back, staring out the window at the few flakes of snow falling outside.
His whole face lit up when he looked at me, and my heart almost gave up on keeping me alive to leap out of my chest and run over to him.
“I was starting to wonder where the hell you were,” he said.
“You didn’t check your phone?”
The look on his face turned sheepish, and I watched him scramble for his phone on his side of the bed, lips pursed as he saw my text.
“Thought maybe you’d abandoned me at the first chance,” he said, and it was delivered like a joke, but I could hear the real worry hidden under it.
