He lifted his head and smiled at me. “No. I promise not to hurt you again.”
My own smile vanished and I had to blink the back tears that suddenly burned the backs of my eyes. “You can’t make that promise, Rowan. No one can. If I’ve learned anything in my life, it’s that pain is inevitable.”
His gaze warmed as it flicked over my face. The pity I saw in those ice-blue depths was like a punch to the throat. “I can’t say that you’re wrong,” he said. “I’m just sorry you’ve ever had to deal with it.”
I cleared my throat awkwardly and gave him a small shrug. “It’s part of life, right?” The grin on my lips felt tight…fake. “Can we… can we maybe start over?”
“What do you mean?”
“Can we maybe… be friends?” I asked hesitantly, aware that it wasn’t what he wanted, but knowing I wasn’t capable of giving more. At least not with him.
Rowan’s forehead fell to my shoulder as he let out a deep sigh. “You really want to be friends?” He said the word like it left a bad taste in his mouth.
“I really do,” I replied softly. “It’s all I can offer, Rowan. I’m sorry.”
Pulling a deep breath in through his nose, he sat up and ran a hand through his rumpled hair. It felt like an eternity passed before he finally spoke. “All right. I can do friends.”
I sucked in a breath of sweet relief as he stood to leave the room. It wasn’t until I caught sight of Rowan wearing nothing more than a black pair of boxer briefs that I realized I was wearing something completely different than I had been the previous night. Looking down, I noticed I was wearing a t-shirt so big I was swimming in it, my panties, and… nothing else.
“Uh, Rowan? What happened to my clothes?” He looked over his shoulder and gave me a devilish smirk before walking out the door. If that smirk hadn’t gotten me all hot and bothered, I totally would have chased after him so I could blow in his face again.
Friends.
Fucking friends.
Well, if that wasn’t a kick in the balls, I didn’t know what was. Hell had frozen over. I’d officially been friend-zoned for the first time in my life. But I’d give her what she wanted. I’d be her friend. I’d be the best damn friend she ever had.
Then I’d go in for the kill.
Then I’d get what I wanted.
Since that strange morning when I woke up in Rowan’s bed, things seemed to have gone back to normal. Well, normal-ish. I didn’t think anything about our interactions would be considered normal to the outside world, but it worked for us. He was still an unbending asshole most of the time. I was still a smartass whenever the opportunity arose. And with him being an unbending asshole, the opportunity arose a lot. But there was one major shift between us that I found myself enjoying more than I should have. We laughed. All the time. We made jokes, we teased, we pushed each other’s buttons. And it was fun. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed so much with a man. It was as if we understood each other on a deeper level, in a way I refused to let myself overanalyze.
He still touched me whenever there was a chance. Those touches could have still been considered less than professional, but I didn’t have it in me to fight any longer. I didn’t want to. I was skating a very slippery slope, craving those touches like a junky craved their next fix. My body reacted to everything about Rowan. His voice, his presence, his smell. There wasn’t one thing about him that didn’t turn me on in some way. I was in Hell, but damn if I wasn’t absolutely loving every minute of it.
The only downside was, in the evenings when I had to go home and give myself the talk. I spent an hour every night, standing in front of my mirror, reminding myself not to look too hard, feel too much. I had to keep my guard up. I had to be strong, because when that hurt came… and it most definitely would, I needed to be prepared. My life had never been easy. And I’d have been the most stupid of fools to forget that. I went to bed every single night telling myself that Rowan Locklaine hurting me eventually would not break me. But the fear was always there, buried down deep where I could ignore it whenever I chose to.
But I was tough. I could handle it. If I just kept telling myself that, it would eventually become the truth… right?
It had to.
“What are you doing?”
“Jesus, Rowan!” I yelped, my entire body jolting, nearly sending my laptop crashing onto the floor. He was right there, leaning over the arm of the couch behind me, his handsome face only an inch or two away from me. And I hadn’t heard him coming. “You scared the shit outta me!”
“Sorry.” He chuckled with a grin that said he was anything but sorry. Before standing to his full height and moving around the couch, he leaned in to plant a kiss on the tip of my nose. That was another development in the week that had followed waking up in his bed. Rowan’s lips seemed to find themselves on my body at least three times a week. For the most part, the pecks were somewhat platonic, but that didn’t stop my body from damn near overheating every single time he did it.
“So, what are you doing?” His large frame plopped down onto the other end of the couch, causing me to bounce. Before I had a chance to bend my knees to move my feet out of the way, his long fingers wrapped around my ankles, pulling my feet onto his lap like it was the most casual, normal thing in the world.
“What’s it look like I’m doing?” I responded snidely, trying to camouflage the fact that my heart felt like it was about to beat right out of my chest. A smart woman would have yanked her feet back, creating much-needed space. But smart flew right out the damn window when it came to Rowan. “I’m working. Something you should be doing. Or is your book going to write itself?”
“Needed to take a break. I wouldn’t want to exhaust my creative genius, now, would I?”
“Hmmm,” I mumbled noncommittally before adding in a sarcastic, “Sure.”
“You know, maybe you wouldn’t be such a smartass if you just read my books. Then you’d understand what all the hype’s about.”
Focusing my unseeing gaze on the computer screen, I tried my hardest to keep from giggling as I responded with a casual, “Not my taste, sorry.” It was so hard not to laugh every time we fell into that particular discussion. My unwillingness to read anything other than my go-to genres—romance, romance, and more romance—irked Rowan like you wouldn’t believe. And I loved mashing at those buttons, watching him briefly lose it. I’d lost count of how many times we’d argued over my refusal to read his murder/mystery series.
“Jesus, you’re such a girl,” he said with an annoyed grumble.
“So kind of you to notice,” I deadpanned, eyes still on my work.
“Oh, I definitely noticed,” he said with a low, deep rasp.
Making the conscious effort to ignore the sultry tone of his voice, I pushed forth with my typical smartass attitude. The combination of his tone, the way he was still touching me, and the fluttering in my belly at the easy way we were with each other was sensory overload, and I needed to put a stop to it before I melted into his comfy sofa. “Besides,” I started, switching gears in order to shift the mood in the room. “I heard those books were sooo boring. Why waste my time?”
Those crystal-clear, blue eyes narrowed on mine just as his agile fingers prodded at the soles of my feet. “Agh! Stop!” I screamed as he continued to tickle me, writhing around on the couch, trying to get away, holding on to my laptop the best I could. “Stop! Stop! I’m sorry!” I cackled and snorted, failing to break his hold on me.