AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I click out of the app, pretending to be focused on my phone, even though she’s already betrayed me. Cursing the fact that there’s no time machine app to take me back and stop all this from happening in the first place.
“Uh… that was nothing. Just a joke list the girls put together for me. Madison and Wren were just being funny the other night. We were drinking and talking. Just being silly. You know. I’m sure you do the same with the guys.” I swallow hard and then risk raising my eyes to get a look at him, a flush burning across the skin on my cheeks and chest.
I don’t think I can live here anymore. I’ll need to pack my bags and head back to the hotel. Listening to my neighbors fuck and worrying about a potential overzealous fan is a hell of a lot better than Cooper knowing how I want to get fucked. That I’ve thought about him that way.
And what if he tells Rob that I have a list like this? That he’s on it. I’m sure they’ll have a long laugh at it. Or at least Rob would. Cooper isn’t like that. Really, Cooper wouldn’t share something like that with Rob at all, or at least, I don’t think he would. That’s my only solace here. Focus on the positives, right?
“Do you have a sex list?” He’s recovered now. Amused even. I can hear it in his voice even though I’ve returned to staring at my phone.
“It’s not like that. It’s a… a challenge list, and there’s just some sex stuff on there,” I say dismissively and scroll the ingredient list, pretending to have lost all interest in what just happened. We can just move on. Especially when I figure out what ingredient I forgot. “Vanilla. I forgot the vanilla!”
“I’m not sure that list includes anything vanilla. Can you play it again?”
“Cooper.”
“I just want to hear the last one again.” He hovers as I go to get the vanilla out of his pantry, looking at me expectantly.
“No, I just need to get the spoon for this.” I dodge around him and go for the measuring spoons.
“So I didn’t hear it right?”
“I don’t know what you thought you heard.” I shake my head and measure out the vanilla, pouring it into the cake batter and restarting the mixer like my phone didn’t just tell my ex’s brother I’ve thought about fucking him.
I stare into the cake batter like if I look hard enough, it might just take me down into its little vortex of chocolatey goodness and let me disappear from this kitchen. I’m contemplating other exit strategies when I feel his hands brush over my shoulders and down my upper arms. Just that soft touch has goosebumps lighting up my skin.
He leans down, and I hear his breathing change before he speaks, and when he does, it’s a tone I’ve never heard him use before. One that has every little part of me paying attention because it’s so soft, I have to focus to make sure I hear him right.
“I’ve thought about you so many times, Trixie. If it was really a joke, I’ll never bring it up again. But if it wasn’t… tell me.”
My heart is in my throat. It must be because I can feel every single little flutter of it, and I can’t find words. This can’t be real. Now it’s me who didn’t hear him correctly.
“Not entirely,” I say softly. I can admit that much. The whole list wasn’t a joke, but I still have some plausible deniability since Madison wrote it for me.
One of his hands slides the rest of the way down my upper arm, over my elbow, and his fingers brush my waist. He bends closer until I can feel the slightest whisper of his breath over the shell of my ear. His fingers inch slowly over me, and I don’t move away.
“Are the other things on the list a joke?” He asks quietly, so much so I barely hear him over the pounding of my own heart.
“No. Well… It’s like I said. Like an adventure-challenge sort of list for the summer. Things I want to challenge myself to try.”
“Because if I’m already on your list, you might as well use me to make your way through it. I could help you with some of them. All of them, really.” His voice is so soft and deep that I might be lost in it.
“All of them?” I nearly choke on my own words. I’m already imagining him doing those things to me. The naked version I saw in his bathroom the other morning using me how he sees fit, and I’m ready to confess everything.
“Any of the ones you want.” There’s a soft, half-nervous laugh from him that puts me enough at ease that I feel like I can admit some of the truth.
“I want to…”
“But?”
16
Cooper
She doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t move away from me either. I can feel the way the tension is rolling off her, hear it in the way she’s breathing. If I’ve ever had a chance with her, this is it. So I take it and hope like hell it doesn’t sink our friendship if I fail. I’ve gotten too attached to more Trix in my life, too needy to have her any way I can, to be ready to lose her. But I need to know if there’s anything more for her there.
“You’ve been on my list for a long time, Trix.”
“I didn’t think you had room on your list.” She teases me, a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
