Autumn
The alarm on my phone went off at five a.m. Disoriented, I fumbled my hand on a nightstand that wasn’t mine, trying to shut it off.
“The agony,” Connor mumbled.
The beeping silenced, I rolled to face him. He lay on his stomach, face half-buried in his pillow, and everything we’d done that night came flooding back to me, bringing a flush of heat to my face.
“Sorry,” I whispered. “Go back to sleep.”
“I plan to.” One green eye peeked open and he gave me a lazy smile.
I bit my own smile with my front teeth. “Last night was really good.”
“Really good?” His arm snaked out and pulled me in tighter. “I can’t let you leave here with ‘really good.’”
I laughed and gave his chest a playful shove. “I have to work. And maybe I was understating it a little.”
He kissed me softly. “I’m glad you stayed.”
Oh God, the butterflies.
“Me too.” I ran my fingers through his hair. “I can’t stop smiling.”
He kissed me again. “I don’t want you to.”
“But I’ll be late for work.”
His eyes went to the window behind me, the blinds drawn. “It’s still dark out. You do this every morning?”
“Bakery life starts early.” I sat up, holding the sheet around me. “Do you mind if I make some coffee?”
Connor had already settled back into his pillow. “Nope. Make yourself at home.”
“Can I borrow one of your T-shirts to wear while I do?”
I wasn’t quite ready to put my dress back on; I wanted Connor’s arms around me. Wearing his shirt—something he wears close to his skin and catching the smell of his cologne, his laundry soap and the indescribable scent of him—was the next best thing.
“Dresser,” he said. “Second drawer.”
I slipped out of Connor’s bed naked and went to his dresser. I found a dark gray V-neck shirt in the drawer. It looked a tad too small for Connor, but still plenty large to cover me. I pulled it over my head and inhaled.
Wow.
A tingle of electricity danced over my skin. The residue of cologne under the laundry soap was different than Connor’s usual scent—sharper and more potent—and it went straight to my head. It woke up my blood cells better than coffee and I had to press my thighs together.
What in the world?
Padding toward the kitchen to get my muddled brain some coffee, I put the soft cotton of his shirt to my nose and inhaled again.
Wow again.
It was like taking a hit off of pure masculine pheromones, but somehow different from what I’d felt and sensed lying in Connor’s bed.
“Oh, stop.”
I vowed to quit with the weird thoughts and to bask in the newness of it all. If there was one truth I had after reading that poem, it was that Connor had many facets, and clearly I hadn’t discovered them all yet.
That prospect of discovery—one of my favorite parts of a new relationship—brought a slow smile over my lips as I came around the corner of the hall. The light was on, and I stopped short with a little yelp. “Oh.”
Weston stood at the dining room table, furiously cramming books and papers into his bag, as if he were stealing them. His head shot up at my little gasp and his gaze raked me up and down. Over my bare legs, my thighs and my small breasts. I immediately crossed my arms over them as if I were naked.
“Hi,” I stammered. “I didn’t know you were here. I mean, awake.”
Weston stared. His mouth parted and the tip of his tongue touched his upper lip. Then, like a man waking from a dream, his head gave a twitch and his entire expression went hard and sharp.
“What the hell are you wearing?”
I flinched and looked down. “One of Connor’s shirts?”
“That’s my shirt.” He stared a moment more, then tore his gaze from me to jerk at the zipper on his bag.
“Oh,” I said, my cheeks inexplicably burning, the heat racing through my veins to every part of my body. “It was in his drawer.”
“It’s mine,” he said.
“Sorry. I’ll take it off,” I said.
His head flicked back to me, eyes wide.
“Not now,” I said. “I mean, I was—”
“Forget it,” Weston said, standing straight and shouldering his bag. “The Drakes send a cleaning lady once a week. She does the laundry…mixes up our clothes sometimes.”
His gaze flicked up and down along my body, and I could have sworn I saw a flash of pain in the blue-green depths, before they turned icy again.
“I’m going. See you.”
A soft pain swelled in my chest at his refusal to be in the same room with me for longer than a minute. I tugged the hem of the shirt—Weston’s shirt—lower over my thighs.
“Weston?”
“Yeah?” he said at the door without turning.
“I miss our talks.”
His shoulders flinched almost imperceptibly. A pause fell between us in which the air grew thick. Then he sliced through it with his cold tone.
“What talks?”
I slumped against the kitchen counter. “Nothing. Have a good day.”
Weston hesitated a moment more, than grunted from his throat and headed out, shutting the door hard behind him.
The silence felt thick and heavy and the apartment seemed cold and dim now. I went back to Connor’s room. I changed out of Weston’s shirt and put it in the hamper, then reached for my dress that was a crumpled ball on the floor.
“Got your coffee?” Connor mumbled.
“No, I need to get back to my place anyway,” I said, buttoning my dress up the front. “Shower and change.”
“‘Kay.”
I grabbed my shoes and purse, then bent to kiss Connor.
“Have a good day,” I said. I hesitated for a second, then bent to kiss him again, trying to recapture the warmth of the morning that Weston’s cold snap had ruined.
Connor’s lazy smile widened. “You sure you can’t stay?”
“No, I’ll be late.”
“I’ll call you later.”
“Okay,” I said. “Bye.”
I hurried out of the apartment, one of my father’s sayings in my thoughts.
If you hear the snake’s rattle, best to listen to it.
Weston was an asshole. That was his rep, and I had no concrete reason to think otherwise. He’d hardly spoken a handful of words to me over the last month. He left a room minutes after I walked into it, often with a cutting remark. And yet…
I always felt there was more to Weston than he let on, and that he did nothing to alter his asshole reputation because it guarded him. I couldn’t prove it, but I knew it. Instinctively. And it made me immune to his crankiness.
But it hurts a little, I thought as I walked home, shivering in the gray, misty morning. Just a little.