“You mean one year, nine months, and thirteen days,” I correct, and Parrish gives me a warning look. “But yeah, I see what you’re saying.”
“We’ll tell her together,” he announces, exhaling sharply. I guess when he said, ‘I’ve made my decision’, he was … choosing me? “Fuck, maybe we should just get it out of the way and do it tomorrow?”
“You know her best,” I tell him, and he takes it like a compliment, nodding in agreement. I bite my lower lip and then scurry across the hall for one, last kiss, throwing my arms around his neck and teasing his tongue with my own. We kiss for quite a while, and things start to heat up all over again.
“Get out of here, Gamer Girl,” he purrs at me, putting his hands on my hips and forcibly putting some space between us. The move seems to pain him which I like. “Get some sleep.”
The way Parrish looks at me, I almost wonder if he’s going to say something else. He seems to change his mind at the last minute, offering up a saucy smile before he steps back and closes his bedroom door in my face for what better be old times’ sake.
“You’re an asshole,” I grumble, but I’m smiling, too, as I head back into my room, tripping over my stupid book bag and nearly falling flat on my face. I kick it to the side before I notice a vase full of flowers on my nightstand.
They’re beautiful, this gorgeous bouquet of sunflowers that makes me smile when I brush my fingers over the yellow petals. The smile slides off my face when I realize that, in order to get these flowers in here, someone would’ve had to come down the hall and put them there.
If it were Tess, she would’ve surely knocked on Parrish’s door to look for me. It can’t have possibly been Paul, Kimber, or any of the kids, obviously. So … “Chasm.”
I breathe his name and close my eyes tight against a rush of pain.
He brought me flowers?
I can’t seem to wrap my mind around it, even as I set my Tess-phone up on the tripod, climb under the covers and curl up on my side. I’ll ask him about it tomorrow, I promise myself, and then my mind is inevitably drawn back to memories of Parrish.
No matter what Tess says, no matter what she does, I’ll never regret spending the night with him.
Never.
That is … until I find out that he’s been kidnapped because of it.
“Thought you might like to know that Lumen is finally home,” Tess says when I come downstairs the next morning, dressed in a baggy sweatshirt and sweatpants, like the clothes can somehow prevent her from knowing about me and Parrish until we’re both ready to talk. I just stare at her back; she’s standing in front of the espresso machine, so I’m not sure she knows who, exactly, it is that she’s talking to, me or Parrish.
If it’s me, then she’s made a huge mistake. I don’t want to talk to her. How could she even remotely think otherwise?
She glances back at me, but the expression on her face doesn’t change from pleasant neutral.
“And we’re going to talk about this dating thing.” Tess turns back to her coffee as I do my best to hold back a scream. Does she really not understand the effect her words had on me? I glare at her, but I make my voice as pleasant as I can when I respond.
“Yeah, sure. Whatever.” I move into the kitchen to look for food—I’ve made a habit of asking before I eat anything now which seems to piss Tess off. What would also piss her off is knowing that I slept with her son last night. I can’t believe we actually had sex, I think as I stare at Tess and feel the sharp dagger of betrayal bury itself deep in my heart. When she finds out, she’s going to despise me; I just know it. Somehow, that doesn’t seem to matter. She dislikes me anyway, doesn’t she? “I’m glad Lumen’s back. Guess Parrish was right.”
Parrish.
I smile as memories of last night flooding in. That is, until Chasm clears his throat from behind me and I jump. When I spin to face him, everything else seems to fade away. He’s staring down at me like I’ve taken a hammer to his heart, shattered it, made him bleed.
The sunflowers … ask about the sunflowers. I feel suddenly tongue-tied and disoriented in his presence in a way I’ve never been before.
“I hope he was at least a gentleman,” he grinds out, his voice thick with caustic humor. Tess can’t hear us, not with the sound of the milk steaming and the wall-mounted TV murmuring the morning’s news. “If he wasn’t, I’ll kill ‘im.”
