Page 51 of Sweet Spot

My eyes fluttered with surprise. “You still want to take me somewhere?”

“Why wouldn’t I? If you thought hanging out with Emmett and Julian was going to count as our date, then your perception of me is still as shitty as it was the day we met.”

I snorted. “I promise you, it could never get as bad as it was the first night.”

“Good,” Lukas said, pressing those smirking lips on the side of my head as he took my hand and led me away from the bar. “Glad to know some things do change.”

18

LUKAS

I was eleven the first time I saw snow. In real life at least – I’d seen plenty in movies. But I had an irrational distaste for fake snow, probably because of the house across the street. During Christmastime every year, they taped piles of cheap cotton balls to their windows to mimic mountains of snow. I thought it looked fucking stupid but Tess was so charmed she used to take pictures, so it was no surprise at all that she bawled the first time she saw actual snow.

I was eleven, she was seven and our parents had made a random decision to put us on a plane two days before Christmas, sending us to our uncle’s house in Philly. They’d been fighting worse than usual the week prior, over something neither Tess nor I couldn’t understand, so despite the fact that we were untrusting kids who barely knew this Uncle James, we found ourselves both eager to go.

There had to be a thousand good memories from that short vacation but three stuck out most: Tess crying out of joy to see snow, Uncle James predicting I’d wind up at Wharton and me sneaking out Christmas night with his classic wood toboggan. It was probably 1AM when I raced what felt like sixty miles an hour down the street. The wind whipped my hair back and the cold stung the hell out of my cheeks. I knew that none of what I was doing was safe and that it was a bad idea on multiple fronts, but I doubled down anyway, switching positions mid-ride and lying on my stomach to go headfirst down the dark, icy road.

I wasn’t sure when I’d get another snow so I was going to make the best of it. For that reason, I didn’t regret the cuts and bruises from getting launched off the sled at the end of the road. It was just how I rolled from an early age – I made smart, logical decisions ninety percent of the time. Then without warning, I did something fucking stupid and reckless.

I’d guess that putting someone in the hospital counted as my reckless decision this year but whatever I was doing with Lia this week probably came in at a close second.

I’d slept over two nights in a row now.

Couldn’t help myself though. She let me so I did. Neither night was planned – it just happened. It was also too damned easy to get out of bed in the morning, get changed for work across the hall and come back in time to see her finally stirring in bed. There was something relaxing about watching her in bed, half-oblivious to me. It was like the storm inside me calmed every time I looked at her rubbing sleep from her eyes. I couldn’t guess what that particular image did to me but it struck some unknown chord inside me that Julian would probably give me hell for.

But fuck it. I was prepared for a bad week and if mornings with Lia softened the blow, then I was going to enjoy as many as I could, despite all the reasons telling me to just nip it in the bud.

I was well aware of the strain between us, ever since the night with Julian, Emmett and Bryce. I could tell she was hurt by my childfree admission. I knew I had no plans to change my outlook despite that. Basically, we’d spelled out in one night that we weren’t meant for each other. Even if we were in fact looking for a relationship, it was clear now that one would be pointless.

Yet here I was, still unable to get enough of her.

“Same breakfast we had yesterday?” Lia asked when I joined her in the kitchen.

There it was. I grinned, realizing she was oblivious to the fact that with that question, she’d finally slipped up. Despite our proximity in the past few nights, Lia had kept a certain distance. She was noticeably antsy about saying anything too familiar – anything that might sound like something a girlfriend would say.

It was cute, especially since she thought she was being slick about it.

There was no use of the words “we” or “us" – it was only, “Are you hungry?” or “Should I grab dinner?” There was also her worst offense: “I’m going to go grocery shopping today. I can pick up extra food if you’re interested in me cooking dinner for you tonight.”

It was a hilariously robotic interlude to our otherwise intimate routine. We’d had more sex in the past three days than I had in the months before I met her. I showered with her the past two mornings. I soaped her up from head to toe and obviously spent extra time on her tits. At night, she sat on my lap while we watched TV and I spread her legs so I could finger-fuck her at my leisure.

And when we went to bed, she laid on my chest.

Last night, when she woke up out of nowhere, I asked her what was wrong and she whispered to me her adorably stupid dream. Something about getting an angry letter and an entire shipment of truffles back from an unhappy customer. She let me kiss her for several minutes before we drifted back to sleep.

To be clear, I was generally never eager to use the words “intimate” or “routine” to describe anything in my life but there was no denying what the past few days were.

Yet there was no mention of “we” till this morning.

Just to be a dick, I made sure to repeat it back to her.

“Yes. Same as we had yesterday,” I smirked as I sat at the counter in just my sweats, reveling in how she paused and blushed before going to work on breakfast.

It was a quarter to nine by the time we finished eating and I probably should’ve been thinking more seriously about getting to work. But then she started making chocolate and suddenly, there was another thing I hadn’t seen her do yet. Apparently, my mind was collecting images of her like baseball cards. There were several I had more than one of, many I fantasized about and apparently a good handful that I didn’t even know I wanted till I saw it.

So I stayed another hour watching her do things I didn’t really understand. Something about tempering chocolate. Some other thing about cooling it. I didn’t care what the terminology was – I just enjoyed watching Lia drift away to a happy place I wish I had. It was like I wasn’t even there as she leaned over to carefully paint each round mold with a small brush and what looked like paint. Occasionally, as she drew small, identical strokes over the rows upon rows of tiny canvases, I heard her give a little hum of contentment.

And though her top was starting to slip irresistibly off her shoulder, I closed my eyes for a second. I wanted to feel what she was feeling. Even if it was a borrowed feeling, I wouldn’t mind at least a taste of it.