While there were presumed benefits of having a conversation with Brett in my current state of nakedness, it seemed more appropriate that I be dressed.
A quick search through his bathroom laundry basket led me to the T-shirt he’d worn at yoga the day before. I did the sniff check to make sure it wasn’t a disgusting choice of attire and found that the only thing it smelled of was Brett’s natural manly state.
It was a scent that did surprising things to my lower parts. Had I always been so affected by his pheromones or was this a new thing brought on by the knowledge of how incredibly talented the guy was in bed?
I wanted to blame it on the latter, but there was a part of me that I’d refused to acknowledge for years that screamed it was the former.
Whichever, I slipped the T-shirt on and admired myself in his mirror. Still looked like a girl who’d been fantastically fucked—there was no doing anything with my hair and hickeys—but now I also wore the subtext of I belong to the guy who owns this shirt.
Maybe that was a little too obvious, but men in romance books always seemed to like seeing women in their belongings. Generally, the woman didn’t stay dressed for long, having been ravished on sight. Might as well try it out in real life.
I considered searching for a pair of shorts to wear underneath—from his drawers, not the basket—but I wondered if maybe that was too invasive, and besides, I was eager to see him. Surprisingly eager. As if it had been days instead of mere hours.
I was nervous too. Surprisingly nervous. And it took a good few deep breaths before I gathered my courage and strolled out to the kitchen. He was at the stove, cooking a batch of bacon. The greasy napkin on the counter suggested he’d already eaten the first batch.
I leaned a hip against the counter I’d leaned on the night before, trying not to let lusty thoughts of what we’d done there take over my agenda. “Morning.”
“Hey,” he said, throwing me a casual glance followed by a longer look when he realized what I was wearing. “You’re wearing my dirty laundry now? Maybe we need to draw lines in this relationship—for your sake, not mine.”
Not quite the reaction I’d intended.
I sniffed at it again, and still found nothing distasteful about the scent. “I think you have a strange barometer of what’s dirty and what isn’t.” The double entendre hit me after the words were out of my mouth, and I felt my cheeks heat with Brett’s grin. “Anyway, I think I look good in it.”
“Well. I can’t imagine there’s anything you don’t look good in.” He turned back to his cooking, so I had to assume that he was the one blushing now, even though I’d never seen him blush in ten years.
All right, maybe I fantasized he was blushing was a more accurate statement. Point was he’d reacted as I’d hoped after all. Sort of.
Okay, maybe not at all because his attention was completely on his cooking instead of on ravishing, but that was probably better since we needed to talk.
But how to start?
“I assume you want your usual?” he asked while I was figuring out what I should say. “I’m making this batch extra crispy.”
My “usual” referred to the bacon cheese tomato omelette he made for me every time I was over for breakfast. Three whole eggs, not just the egg whites, and topped with crispy bacon bits as well as loaded with them inside.
“Yes, please.” I was generally polite, but now the simple words felt charged. I’d used them time and time again over the course of the night—begging for his cock, begging for him to let me release, begging for him to never stop—and now I felt more wanton than well mannered.
I studied him, trying to see if the words had the same impact on him, and...nothing. He remained focused on his task, just like he always was. As though it was a regular old Sunday.
Feeling a little deflated, I circled around to the other side of the counter, climbed up on a stool, and wished I’d brought my phone from the bedroom so I could pretend to be flipping through social media like I normally did when he cooked for me. Instead of swooning over his every move like a crazy girl.
Fortunately—or not, depending on how I looked at it—he didn’t seem aware of me at all, let alone what I was doing.
Was he just that good at being “normal” or had last night not meant as much to him as it had to me? The longer he stayed with his back to me, the more I began to think I’d misinterpreted his crush and that crazy good sex was just his default with every woman.
Lucky women.
And also, I now hated every woman he’d ever given a second glance to.
I was still only at the beginning of my shame spiral when he finally turned to serve me a gorgeous-looking omelette covered in crispy bacon just the way I liked it and complete with a parsley garnish.
That much attention to detail had to imply he thought I was special, right?
If the plate of food didn’t, his eyes couldn’t hide it. There was a crackle when our gazes collided, and the corners of his mouth turned upward like he was fighting a headstrong smile.
“It’s four eggs instead of three,” he said. “I thought you could use the energy this morning.”
...There it was. An acknowledgment of what had happened, and now I was the one losing the battle with my smile.
Hell, I didn’t even try. I just grinned like an idiot.
But then all of a sudden, Brett was frowning. He reached out his hand to grab one of mine at the wrist. “Oh, shit. I did this to you?”
I looked down at the red mark. “I seem to remember not protesting.”
His expression relaxed somewhat. “No, you didn’t protest at all.”
Ah ha. So he did remember the begging.
I twisted my hand in his grasp so that our palms faced each other and laced my fingers in his. The way we fit together was natural.
He didn’t pull away, and the charge around us amplified and energized. I felt alive from the pulse in the air. If this had always existed between us, how had I resisted it for so long?
“Last night...Brett…” I wasn’t scared to tell him how I felt now. Just awkward in how to word it. “I had a really good time.”
“Yeah? I did too.” His thumb now stroked the outside of my thumb, and holy hell, that simple caress sure made a mess between my thighs.
“Like...a really good time.”
“Good.”
“Like...maybe we should do that more often.”
He chuckled as he removed his hand from mine. Not in a rejection sort of way, but in an I-need-my-hands-to-fix-my-own-plate kind of way. “You mean like a friends with benefits kind of thing?” he asked as he turned back to pour the rest of the egg mixture into the skillet.
“Um, maybe? I was actually thinking more like…” Now the nerves were returning. Talking to his backside both helped and didn’t. In some ways, it was easier to be vulnerable without his eyes on me. In other ways, his eyes were the main thing telling me that this connection between us was real.
“More like?”
“You know, we’re already so close. We spend all our time together. We know each other’s secrets. And we...care about each other. Add in sex and that kind of defines a romantic relationship.”
He froze.
At least, it looked like he did.
It was a little hard to tell from where I sat. Maybe he was just waiting for the eggs to cook before he flipped them, but it did seem like his back got straighter and his shoulders tensed, and he held that pose for what felt like hours.
It was probably only a handful of seconds later when he reached to grab the bowl of Gouda he’d shredded earlier and poured it into the skillet. “I thought we said we weren’t going to let last night get in the way of our friendship.”
“We did.” I hadn’t been prepared for this sort of response. Honestly, I hadn’t prepared myself for any response except banging on the kitchen counter again, and it took a moment to figure out what to say next. “This isn’t getting in the way of our friendship, though. This is adding to it.”
When he didn’t say anything, I said more. “Trying it out anyway. Seeing if it works.”
Why wouldn’t it work? We already worked. Didn’t last night prove we worked?
“I’m listening. I’m just…” He folded the omelette in half. “Thinking.”
The fact that there was anything to think about was baffling. And irritating. “You’ve invited me to live with you before.”
“Now you want to live together?”
“No.” This was not going well at all. “It just seems if you’re offering to share a lease that you’re already invested in our relationship long term.”
“Of course I’m invested. We’re good friends.”
I ignored the emphasis he placed on the F word. “Really, it’s amazing we haven’t tried to be a couple before this.”
He flipped his eggs over, waited a few long seconds, then slid the meal onto his waiting plate before turning to face me. “You’ve never said anything about considering us an Us before now.”
I hadn’t.
But neither had he.
I swallowed. “You haven’t thought about it?”
When I’d asked the question the night before, his expression had opened up, and I’d seen into this vault of stored emotions. He’d thought about me a lot. He’d wanted me a lot.
But now his face was hard, and the vault was completely closed. “That’s just not where I see us going.”
“Oh.” My eyes pricked.
Fuck. It had been a long time since I’d actually cried over a boy. “Crying” over Scott had really just been code for “I’m going to eat a lot of ice cream and feel sorry for myself.”
This rejection felt completely different.
That cliché about the knife through the gut? That was how this felt. Jagged and deep and it was not my fault if Brett got blood all over his hardwood floors.
“Edie…I’m sorry.”
The nickname had turned me into an inferno the night before. Now it felt patronizing. Come on, Edie. Get it together.
“No, no, no. Don’t be sorry. It was just an idea.” A fucking lame idea, apparently. Though I couldn’t really make sense of that because hadn’t he always shown signs that he liked me?
“You’re just feeling emotional because of Scott.”
“Yes, yes, totally it.” It wasn’t it at all, but I was happy to cling on to any excuse for the very apparent tears I was blinking back.
“Give it a week, and things will be back to where they were between the two of you.”
Was that what this was about? He thought I was rebounding from Scott? “I’m done with him.”
“I know.”
“For real this time.”
“Good! I’m glad.” He was glad, but he didn’t believe me. It was written all over his...everything.
And that made the tears slow.
Because he wasn’t actually rejecting me, and this thing between us wasn’t a bad idea—he just didn’t believe I meant it.
So now I just needed some time to show him that I did.