“Hey! Need help?” I heard Porter call to me, not having noticed he’d slipped into the garage and opened the doors.
I hopped out of the car and handed him some of the many bags. “How is she?” I asked him.
He bobbed his head. “So-so. She’s been sleeping on and off some of the day. The pain meds take a lot out of her and redressing her legs isn’t a fun process. Otherwise, she seems okay. Like I said earlier, she’s still nervous to be in a new place.”
I nodded along to his explanation. “She take your room or the spare?”
“The spare. We’ll be on human taxi duty for a bit. She can’t wheel the chair on her own yet, so I found an old cell phone and activated it a bit ago. Now she can call or text us in the middle of the night if she needs anything.”
I set everything down on the counter in the kitchen and began to put away some of the food items she’d requested. Strawberry yogurts, some cheesy chips, and a few boxes of cereal. The cereal part made me happy. Was good to know she was a breakfast connoisseur like myself. She even ate all the same brands as me. I made sure to put her boxes on a different shelf so half asleep me wouldn’t try to eat them by mistake.
“So, how’d Misty take it?” Porter finally asked, an amused grin taking over his face. I wanted to punch it right off him. He was getting some sick satisfaction from my misery.
“Not as well as I hoped,” I responded seriously. “But, shockingly enough, she said she’d behave.”
Porter snorted and shook his head.
“What?”
He raised his brow and leveled me with a look of disbelief. “You really think she’s going to behave? That girl is jealous of me when I hug you, and I’m straight as a damn two by four. Do you really think she’s not going to eventually lose her shit knowing there’s a woman as hot as Sophia sleeping one door down from you?”
I groaned, knowing damn well he was probably right. Even barely getting a glimpse of her that night of the fire and I knew she was a looker. This was probably going to end badly.
“Honestly, dude, I don’t know what to do. She either gets with the program, or I’m done.”
Porter laughed and patted me on the back. “You have fun with that.”
I ignored his comment and looked pointedly at the ceiling. “She up?”
He nodded in response. “Took her up a glass of water for her next med dose, so she should have some energy left for a bit. You should go meet her officially and help set her mind at ease that we’re all good with her being here. Don’t think she’ll believe it otherwise.”
Figuring he was right, I grabbed the bags of clothes for her and proceeded up the stairs. When I got to the door, I knocked, waiting for her to invite me in.
“It’s open,” I heard her voice say.
Opening the door, my eyes zeroed in on the bed where Sophia sat. And dammit, I realized instantly that, without a doubt, Sophia was one of the most stunning women I’d ever laid eyes on.
And I was inbigfucking trouble.
Sophia
Iswear, if the men in this house got any more attractive, I was surely going to lose my mind trying to keep myself from checking them out constantly.
As soon as the guy I assumed was Alden walked in, his bright blue eyes zeroed in immediately on me. I squirmed a little under his piercing gaze, both because I was absolutely affected by the way they tracked me from my head to my toes, and how familiar they became to me.
“Hi, I’m Alden,” the man said, offering me a quick handshake. When our hands touched, a memory assaulted me.
A blue eyed boy kissed my cheek after giving me a sunflower, then he swiftly ran away. It was instantaneous and happened so fast I barely caught it.
“Uh, hi. I’m Sophia,” I said lamely, unsure of what to do since he just stood there staring at me.
He blinked rapidly a few times then held up some bags. “Sorry. Just my mind catching up with seeing you again. These are for you. Hope there’s enough in there.”
I reached out and took the bags, setting them on the bed next to me. Shuffling through, I saw an expanse of different clothing items that were way better than I expected to get. Porter hadn’t been wrong. The man could shop.
“Thank you. This is wonderful. It’s more than enough,” I told him genuinely.
He rubbed the back of his neck, showing off the seriously detailed black and gray tattoos that adorned both his arms. It gave him this hard, bad boy edge. But the lost look on his face and nervous movements seem to soften that edge. “So, you settling in okay?” he asked.
