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“I know.” His fingers comb through my hair. “But you don’t have to. I don’t want you to.”
A tear cascades, hanging suspended on my chin. “After…everything…how can you be this…”
“Stupid?” he murmurs.
Wonderful.
“It’s a gift, truly.” Taking a fortifying breath, he gathers himself, pulls away. Using the hem of his shirt, he dries my tears and kisses my forehead. “Come on. Get your shower. Breakfast will help with your hangover. And Lace has been trying to contact you for hours.”
I bristle. Hours? As in, while it was still morning?
That’s never good.
“Why didn’t she barge in?” I ask.
“I told her not to.”
“And she listened?”
Rowan coughs into his hand. “I might have lied. By mistake.”
I cross my arms. “How do you lie by mistake?”
He mumbles something as he rises, strides across the room to the closet, and pulls out a fresh outfit for me.
“What did you say?”
“I implied that you were indecent.” He puts the outfit back, opts for one of the shirts I got at Target, puts that back, too. “Which wouldn’t have been alarming on its own, I don’t think, except I was in the shower when she started banging on the door—”
“No.”
“—and I was worried she’d wake you.”
I crumple on the edge of the bed, head in my hands. “No.”
He takes a deep breath. “So I rushed out after yanking on my boxers, blurted Briar’s indisposed at the moment, got a once-over, and probably gave her the wrong idea.”
“Probably?”
“Absolutely.”
I swear.
“Beyond a shadow of a doubt.” He has the audacity to seem almost pleased when he selects one of my more revealing outfits—tight, crop-top, mini skirt.
My head hurts worse than it did before the Advil started kicking in.
He exits the closet. “Did Chip and Lace actually believe we weren’t already—”
“Yes, they do tend to believe what I tell them.”
“Interesting.”
“Or they used to.”
He holds out my clothes. “What a shame. However, dissolving the trust between you and your confidants is on my list of toxic tasks.”
Standing, I swipe my outfit from his hands. “Bad.”
