I fight with myself about setting boundaries with Mom and about my feelings toward August, thinking they’ll just vanish. What am I doing with my life?
“Shit, let me help you.” His hands rest on my shoulders, guiding me to the bathroom where the door is already open and welcoming me with open arms.
My knees hit the tile floor as I push up the toilet seat. My eyes water while my throat burns. This is so embarrassing. I’m about to vomit in his house. In his bathroom. Practically in his lap.
I gag and whimper while I hear August turn the faucet on. A cold rag touches the nape of my neck, and I close my eyes.
He rubs my back. “You’re okay. I’m right here.”
The cold water feels incredible on my skin, and I turn to look at August, wanting to apologize. His features are slightly blurry while I peer at him through wet eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I whimper.
“Don’t apologize. I’m gonna be here until you feel better. I won’t leave your side.” The small circles he makes on my back calm me.
The towel still feels cold as he moves it around my neck, dabbing it gently. All of this, everything he’s doing, is this how it would be if I gave in to my feelings and let myself have him?
Knowing that he would be there for me sick or not. The comfort he’s giving me at this moment melts the embarrassment away. Even if I do keep on heaving.
“August.” I breathe out through pursed lips toward thetoilet before shifting my eyes to a man who I know loves me and would do anything for me.
All these emotions want to come out. My own,fuck it,moment. I just need to swallow my throw up for one minute, and I’ll be fine.
“Yeah?”
“I—”
My head dips back into the toilet and I vomit.
TWENTY-TWO
AUGUST
What a whirlwind these past few days have been. I can’t even process it. Riley and me going out to dinner. The night I saw that man talking to Riley.
I keep replaying that night at the nightclub. My plan wasn’t to go up to them and tell him she’s mine. Then, coming up with that bullshit excuse that I was saving her from him when really, the truth was just spilling out of me.
I’ve also got my head wrapped around work and Dad. But it felt like I was hit by a truck when she said she misses me and—her feelings. The next day, I couldn’t really bring that up. She doesn’t remember anything.
Or so she says.
But I’m not going to test that theory of whether she remembers. Just knowing that she has feelings for me is good enough right now. We’ll come back to that later.
She stayed in my bathroom for three hours after being sick. I stayed with her the entire time, not leaving her side. My ass was numb from sitting on the tile floor, but her vulnerability kicked something in me that I haven’t felt since before everything that happened between us.
There’s this need to protect her, to tell her everything will be okay. But I can’t help but wonder what it was she was trying to tell me until her head was in the toilet for an hour.
I wasn’t going to push it. Especially since she had thrown up on her clothes, which made her cry some more. When I tried to get up and grab her a T-shirt to change into, she took my hand, begging me to stay.
It wasn’t until she couldn’t take the smell anymore that she finally let me get her clean clothes. I gave her one of my favorite cotton shirts.
“Hey, boss,” Leo, one of my employees, says.
I raise my coffee cup that I grabbed from Sip-Sip Hurray. “I told you, just call me August.”
He stops folding the pile of T-shirts on the table. “I like saying boss. Your dad lets me say it.”
I take a drink of my coffee and walk past him, heading to my office. “My dad earned that title. I’m still working my way up.”
