AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“My idea.”
There’s something strangely intimate about standing in her bedroom, holding her in the dark, while we’re both completely dressed. I let her go and step back and she turns on a light.
There’s a threadbare bear on the bed and everything in the room is in casual disarray and she sees me looking, rushing about, knocking things down while she tries to clean up. I just slide my hands in the pockets of my pants and wait.
Her roommate didn’t know who I was, which is good. And not unexpected. I’m not sure she knows Scarlett’s from money, which makes sense, I guess. Someone like Scarlett, who looks like she’s been here a while, they don’t talk about money issues. Old moneyed people never do, unless it’s to impress. You’re meant to know.
After all, that was drilled into me, too. But I prefer, like my brothers, making my own way.
My gaze keeps returning to the bear that’s on the bed and I take the two steps across the worn floorboards to pick him up.
“Mr. Figglesmort,” she blurts, snatching him from me and holding him.
“He was very safe with me.”
She turns a delightful shade of dark rose. “He’s just an old relic, that’s all.”
“Heirloom?”
“Something like that.” Scarlett places him on the bed with a reverence I’ve only seen with expensive things from her type.
But then again, Scarlett keeps reinventing her own mold.
“You know,” I say, “I’m not going to advertise you live here. Not that there’s shame in it. I think that you taking me here was hard and you might think me knowing about this…where you live, makes things harder, but it makes it real. A lot more real than just cookie cutter representation.”
Now I’m making an utter ass of myself and doing something I don’t think I’ve done in years—screw up what I’m trying to say. I usually think it through, weigh it, find the right words, or hire the right people to say them for me. But here I am, spewing words at her that she just might take the wrong way.
I clear my throat and take hold of her shoulders. “All I wanted to say was I like you’re not boring. You were never boring, but your home? I like it.”
And even though I shouldn’t, and because I can’t think of anything to say beyond that, I kiss her.
It’s just a kiss, a soft and sweet, fleeting kiss.
“Hudson, you should stop kissing me.”
“Why? Do you want me to?”
“No, which is why yo u should.”
She’s got a point and I’m playing with fire and getting burned and it feels a little too good. But an idea’s come to me, to go with my text earlier. I’m going to need to send some more, and really set the cat in among the pigeon. Get that ante up where I need it to be.
“Scarlett,” I say, stepping back so I can breathe. “We’re going out. And pack a bag. You’re coming home with me.”
“That’s a terrible idea.”
I frown. “I’m not asking for you to fuck me again. I have guest rooms. I think if we’re upping the ante, we should do it right. For all intents and purposes. What do you say?”
“That it’s a terrible idea.”
“So is that a yes?”
She looks at me, those hazel eyes melting dark golden brown. “Yes.”
We go to dinner at one of the hottest to be seen places across from the Park. The kind of place Ryder loves, Magnus wouldn’t bother with, Kingston will use if he needs to, and that I abhor.
It’s the place with a waiting list into next year and it’s where those who want to be seen are, well, seen.
The food’s decent.
