We were being so careful with each other.
Him presumably because of how we’d started, me for reasons I didn’t fully understand.
On the bedside table, my phone waited. I left it untouched. Dread had me unable to check it. I didn’t want to read how Cassie’s impromptu mission had ended, and the implication I wouldn’t be able to ignore. Instead, I got dressed and escaped to the living room.
At last, I was ready to tackle my boxes.
A lot had changed. In the space of a few days, I’d gone from scared little creature to something angrier. With teeth. That in itself was frightening.
I searched through the open box on the dining table, finding kitchen goods, then carried it to put things away in the far more luxurious kitchen than I was used to. Tyler had minimal possessions, mostly only furniture. Nothing to cook with. No glasses or mugs. My mismatched items, bought because I thought they were pretty, graced his shelves, and I didn’t hate how they looked.
Or how it made me feel to quietly claim space in his world.
Another box gave up pillows for the sofa, bold pink against his sombre grey leather. Then I lined my books up on a shelf, mostly biographies of glamorous women I admired for owning their lives. Kathleen Turner buddying up to Elizabeth Taylor. The beautiful Audrey Hepburn now besties with Lauren Bacall.
Not one of them had lived without tragedy. I’d devoured their stories, reading about pain, loss, and how they’d carried on.
Weirdly, that made me feel better for my cray-cray mental state. If they’d survived, I could, too.
Stepping back, I flattened the collection of empty boxes. Between here and the house on the ridge, I had places to call home. At least for now. My whole life felt up in the air, but at least I could go to a drawer for a spoon or to the bedroom for my spare curling wand.
The door clicked open, bringing my man back into the apartment. Tyler’s gaze soaked me in then leapt to the changes I’d made.
I tangled my fingers together. “I unpacked. Is that okay?”
He set down the paper bag he’d brought, the name of a local café on the side, and came to me. In broad daylight, toe to toe, he put his arms around me and lowered his lips in a so-familiar forehead kiss. “Ye have no idea what that does to my heart.”
My lips parted, and my breathing stopped. Hisheart. More than a little terrified, I placed my palm to the centre of his chest.
Our kiss was a mutual thing, our lips meeting halfway. I sank into the warmth of him. The taste I’d barely got used to.
Tyler kissed me like the whole world had come to a halt around us. He was careful, reverent, then hungry. It woke up my brain and body in the best possible way and sent heat flashing through my veins. I pushed closer to him, up on my toes, needing more.
Deep in his pocket, his phone buzzed.
I broke the kiss. “Bad timing, bestie. Leave us alone.”
He returned his lips to mine. “Whoever it is can wait.”
So they did. Tyler backed me to the nearest wall and let the call ring out while he kissed me stupid. One hand dove into my hair, the other safely curved around my hip. He wouldn’t take this further, I already knew. He treated me so precious.
It was then I realised I had a problem.
A feelings-shaped one.
No refunds. No returns. Mine to own forever.
He smiled as he ended the kiss, unaware of what he’d done. “Look in the bag. I wasn’t sure what you’d like, so I picked half a dozen pastries and a couple of coffees.” My handsome gangster kissed my cheek, linking his fingers to mine to draw me across the room, his chatter continuing. “One is sweet, so that might be yours. I saw you went big on the sugar back at the ridge.”
“I used to live on sweetened coffee,” I mumbled, dazed by my realisation.
I’d got used to being in the midst of big emotions with him. Warm, happy, glittering ones. But I’d never loved anyone who wasn’t family, and barely any of them. Never a man. Not in the romantic sense.
Tyler took up his phone to check the call. It gave me the opportunity to escape.
“I’ll be right back.” With heated cheeks, I scurried to the bedroom and closed the door.
That lingering sense of foreboding hit big time when I unlocked my phone. It wasn’t even the skeleton girls’ group where the danger lurked. A few nights ago, I’d set up a notification for any new articles that mentioned me, Kane, Mila, or our vile relatives. I’d wanted to know the moment the Marchant-Smythes were outed as being under arrest.
