“But it’s your birthday,” she countered. “That’s no fun for you.”
I looked over at her then. “I’m thirty-six. It’s not like it’s my sixteenth birthday or anything. This wasn’t an ‘oh wow,’ birthday. Just a ‘meh.’”
She rolled her eyes and finished picking up our trash.
Once she was done, she planted herself on the coffee table and looked at me. “Do you want to try to get up to your bed?”
“No,” I admitted, then gritted my teeth and dropped my feet to the floor.
The pain exploded through me, and I had to breathe through it in order not to pass out.
Damn, I was such a pussy.
Getting up, I put one foot in front of the other, getting to the stairs by sheer force of will.
By the time I made it to my bedroom, I was winded, there was a thick sheen of sweat on me as if I’d just busted out five hundred double unders, and my bed looked so inviting that I wanted to crash face-first into it.
“You gonna make it?” she asked, looking at me worriedly.
I swallowed past the bile and nodded, making my way to the bathroom where I relieved myself, brushed my teeth, and headed for bed.
She had already turned down my comforter for me like a damn maid.
Little did she know that I slept on top of the damn thing because I was a lazy motherfucker.
“What’s that look for?” she asked curiously, her eyes on me.
I shuffled painfully to the bed, turned around, and sat down.
The movement made little white dots dance in my vision.
“You okay?” she asked.
I swallowed hard.
“Yes,” I croaked. “Dandy.”
“You don’t look okay,” she surmised.
“I’ll be okay,” I admitted. “I just need to sit here for a second.”
She waited.
“I’m going to go let your dog out. When I get back, I’ll help you lay down.”
I gave her a weak thumb up and heard her call Lion.
Lion, who’d been somewhere near the stairs, did her normal tumble run down them, causing her to laugh at her antics.
I, on the other hand, started to work my sweatpants off my hips.
When I got them down around my ankles, I kicked them off and then slowly pulled the sheet up over my body.
Once all the naked bits were covered, I tried to reach for a pillow and failed to reach it.
I twisted, trying to get myself more fully into bed, and missed all over again.
“Son of a bitch,” I grumbled.
“I’ll get it.”
I looked up and found her shoeless in my bedroom.
I wasn’t sure why the sight of her without shoes hit me so hard, but all of a sudden, I had a wave of possessiveness wash over me at the idea of her being in my home. Looking comfortable.
She helped me into the bed the rest of the way, slowly pushing me until I’d gotten where I wanted to go, and then slowly took her hands off of me.
All the while, my dick stayed hard, which was rather awkward with only a small sheet covering everything.
Luckily, she was too busy staying focused on my shoulder and not my dick to notice.
Once I was settled, she looked at me worriedly.
“Are you going to be able to get up in the middle of the night if you have to go to the bathroom or something?” she asked worriedly.
Probably not.
“No,” I admitted. “At least not feeling like this. But I can’t remember the last time that I had to get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. It’s been a whole lot of years.”
She looked at me skeptically. “You’ve never had to get up in the middle of the night to go pee?”
She sounded so skeptical, in fact, that I nearly laughed.
I would have had I known it wouldn’t hurt.
“No,” I told her. “I have very good control. Plus, I don’t drink all that often before bed, which helps with that.”
“Okay,” she drawled. “Well, if you do need to go in the middle of the night, I’m going to be here. Sleeping on the couch. Okay?”
I nodded.
“Where does Lion sleep?” she asked.
“Wherever she wants,” I admitted. “Usually on the bed, sometimes on the floor next to the bed. Likely she’ll want to be wherever you are tonight, though. She likes people.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’m going to leave your door open. I’m here if you need me.”
I gave her a thumb up with my good hand.
She smiled at me, then walked away, looking over her shoulder once.
Only, she didn’t meet my eyes.
She looked at my dick.
Which meant she didn’t miss the boner after all.
Nice.
CHAPTER 9
Best fucking lawyer ever.
-Text from Carmichael to Croft
CARMICHAEL
The next morning, I was woken up by cursing.
Barely opening my eyes, I squinted at the ceiling in Croft’s living room and thought about how badly I’d slept the night before.
It wasn’t that his couch wasn’t comfortable, or I was unsure about sleeping in a new house.
Nope, all I kept thinking about was how Croft was shot in the parking lot of his work, and how I could’ve lost him before I’d ever had a chance to even have him.
Which was also enlightening for me.
I thought that I was okay with him and me not having a chance.
I’d thought, more fool him.
But now, I was thinking more fool me.
I was thinking that I wasted six months of time when we could’ve been seeing how things went with us because I was prideful.
I replayed that night meeting Karen, too. How he’d been courteous but had also been very good about redirecting her hands so that they didn’t touch him all that often. How, though he answered her questions, did not court her asking questions.
That was when I realized that he was acting like the coach he was. The coach he should’ve been acting like if he was trying to recruit new members to the gym.
Which then, in turn, made me feel stupid.
Because I’d seen him do that with eighteen-year-old girls, seventy-year-old women, and forty-year-old men.
Karen was no different.
Because if she was, then yesterday at the hospital when he all but dismissed her wouldn’t have happened.
Which left me with the thought of ‘I’d wasted a lot of time.’
If we’d been together six months—if it’d worked—I could’ve been in a very good, comfortable relationship right now. We would’ve really been able to see what we did and didn’t like when it came to each other. We would know whether we were going to work.
Oh, and I probably would’ve already had sex with him.
Which, I had to admit, was something that had hung heavily on my mind all night long, too.
Because I hadn’t missed the erection that he’d been sporting last night.
I’d also not missed how sexy he looked with his shirt off and in sweatpants.
More cursing had me swinging my legs over the side of the couch.
Lion, who’d jumped up upon my exit off the couch, ran straight for the back door.
I let her out, watched her for a few seconds, then went to start the coffee.
Once that was going, I grabbed Croft’s antibiotic, his pain pill, and some ibuprofen before heading back up the stairs.