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“I’ll p—”
Davey presses a finger firmly to my lips and holds my body to his even more tightly. “You will not fucking pay me rent.”
“Are you sure this is such a good idea?”
“No,” he says.
I laugh at the brutal honesty. But damn I appreciate it. It makes me think we can actually do this. Be together. Have a relationship. Have a future.
Davey releases his hold on me and pulls away. “I have no idea,” his tone grows serious. “I do know I want to remove the temptation you face daily. I know you think it’s probably not a big deal, or even see it as some test you need to pass every day, but Carter, you’ve passed the damn test, despite the other night. You don’t need to do that to yourself.”
He’s right. I had initially seen walking past the bar daily as some sort of challenge and every day when I made it to my room without stopping was a win. In truth, until the other night, I had started to walk by without even glancing in, maybe pausing slightly to gauge the quality of the pianist on hand for the night. But it didn’t really faze me anymore.
“Besides,” Davey say. “It’s a hotel. It feels like a hotel. Don’t you think it’s time Denver felt like home? You said last night you have no desire to go back to Minnesota.”
I nod and smile at him. “You know, just over a month ago, you wanted to kill me. Do you really think you can live with me?”
Looking out the expanse of windows at the skyline and bright blue sky, he hits me with that brutal honesty again. “I have no idea.”
I laugh.
“Look, I’m not putting a ring on your finger,” he says and rakes his hands through that golden hair I’d had clutched between my fingers only a few hours ago. That statement stings more than I wish it did. “This doesn’t have to be permanent, either. It’s just to get away from the temptation while you’re sorting out where you want to live.”
That stings a bit, too. As much as I am terrified of this offer of living with him and what it means – my heart is clinging to the idea of a life with him, even if my brain is being slow to catch up.
“Away from the temptation to drink and into the den of the temptation that is you.” I say.
“Like I said, the guest room is really nice,” he grins again and kisses me softly. “Just think about it, okay?”
“Okay.” But I don’t need to think about it. My answer is yes. I knew the second he asked, even before my brain fully grasped it. I knew that I was going to say yes. I’m not kidding about how comfortable his damn bed is, and it’s not about the mattress.
Waking up next to him. Starting each morning with him. His arms around me. His scent lingering on the sheets. His kiss. Coffee already made. I smile and look around his huge downtown apartment. The first time I was here years ago I was drunk, and I was here for one reason: to fuck him. I didn’t look around and take in his decorative decisions.
Last night, we had both been singularly minded about getting each other naked. I remember the twinkling lights of the city outside those windows filling my field of vision for the brief moments when I could focus on anything other than his moans and those heated eyes begging me to take charge.
I love the fact that he is all business outside these walls. He is in command of his job, his players, even himself, until he steps through that door with me.
Owning him, controlling him, commanding him. God, that is a high I’ve never felt. It’s a high I didn’t even know I wanted to feel until now.
The apartment is everything I expected from Davey. It’s gorgeous, subdued, minimal, and totally impersonal. It looks like a showpiece. His designers, because I doubt he bothered to do this himself, designed everything around the wall of windows and the large terrace looking out at the city and mountains. There are no curtains, no shades, nothing of any kind to distract from that view. There is nothing at all decorative in this area except for one wall of bookcases and a pair of massive abstract paintings on opposite walls of the room. They are of the city and mountains, all icy and inky with dark grays and blues and blacks. They’re gorgeous and very hard to look away from.
As I look more, I finally realize who the artist is.. A glance at the bottom corner at the Z slashed across the bottom confirms it. Zoe Gordon, Nic’s wife, Travis’ Mom, did these. Brady, Devyn and Levi have a pair of her paintings too. One of them, I think, was done as a wedding gift for Levi and Devyn and is of the incredible mountain view from the apartment Devyn used to rent at the edge of the city. The one Brady now owns.
Davey’s apartment isn’t exactly cold, but it does lack warmth. It lacks any evidence at all of the personality of the man who lives here. But then again, maybe it doesn’t. Davey is gorgeous and subdued and, to most, he is impersonal, standoffish, very closed off.
I wander to the other end of the apartment to check out the aforementioned guest room. I haven’t been down this hall yet.
Three doors line the hallway, a not small powder room, an office and finally the guest room. I don’t make it past the office though. Stopping in the doorway I smile. Still gorgeous, still subdued, but this room is completely personal.
What the rest of the apartment lacks in terms of showing who Davis is, this room has it in spades. There is a massive wall of floor-to-ceiling bookcases and a very large wooden desk, the latter stained a dark coal color. The desk chair is black leather.
I step into the room and sit in the chair. On the wall across from the desk is a massive TV. There is also a large cushy loveseat on the far wall with an equally good vantage point for viewing the TV, and a coffee table and end table. These are perfectly set up as most people would a living room, which at first seems odd to me, until I remember his job. This room is set up for watching game films. It also occurs to me there is no TV in the main living area of the apartment, at least not a visible one, anyway.
Some personal photos are scattered along the bookcases. A couple from his playing days, photos of him and Brady and the Grizzlies’ championships. One of Devyn in a spectacular red dress striking a model pose, but she was laughing hard.
I don’t spot the one that causes my heart to seize until I step away. I do a double take. Tucked on the bottom shelf, in a small 4x6 frame, is a photo of Davey and Luke. Holy shit, I breathe. He looks so much the same as he does now, that golden hair, that grin, clean-shaven then. And his eyes. Those hazel eyes are filled with warmth and happiness. It’s not a look I’ve seen on him often.
But I have seen it. I saw it less than thirty minutes ago. I saw it the morning after my slip when he kept telling me we were going to do this together. I saw it out in that field in the middle of fucking nowhere in Eastern Colorado when he kissed me for the very first time. There wasn’t as much happiness in his eyes that day as relief. A letting go. A surrender to me.
