Kian

I’d intended to, but I shrugged, looking away. “Yeah, no problem. Of course.”

He went back into the bathroom, and his voice called out, over the sound of running water, “I mean it. Everyone’s out there. They know your face. They’re going to be looking for you. I can maneuver around people. I can get you to your roommate without them knowing.”

Fuck.

His words brought the real world back to me. It fell at my feet with a resounding boom. I crossed my arms over my chest, holding the bedsheet even tighter, while thinking of the media storm that would be camped out in front of my apartment building.

“You were kinda stalkerish, hanging out in the shadows before. How did you get to my building’s roof?”

He came back out a moment later, his jeans on and his hair was slightly wet, like he’d wrung his hands through it a few times. Flicking a hand through the strands, he let them dry in a mess, even though I had to admit it was a sexy mess.

Going to the closet, he said over his shoulder, “Through the main door.”

My eyes went down his back, watching his muscles shifting, as he turned the light on and reached for a shirt. Yep, my hormones were not listening to me. He came back out with a black shirt and pulled it on. As the material fell against his body, I saw it was a perfect fit. He reached inside the closet again and pulled out a few more pieces of clothing.

He placed them onto the bed. “You’re going to have to blend like I do.”

My loins were all about blending. “Huh?”

His eyes narrowed. “I don’t have any parlor tricks. It’s still a little dark, so that means we can dress in dark clothing. Put the white shirt on underneath the sweatshirt. You can pull off the sweatshirt if it’s light outside when we leave.”

Going to a dresser, he pulled out a white baseball cap and a dark one. He held up the black one. “You wear this underneath your hood and pull both of them down. When we leave”—he held up the white cap—“you put this one on. And shades. You always have to wear sunglasses.”

“We’ll still get recognized.”

He shook his head, a slow grin tugging at the corners of those dangerous lips. “Trust me.”

I did, and that was how I found myself in the passenger seat of a black sedan, wearing a press badge and watching an entire army of media camped out across the street from my building. If we ran inside, they’d see us. We were screwed.

“How are we getting in there?”

Kian pulled out his phone and started typing on it. “The press are people, just like you and me, but when they have to work, they’re not paying attention. So”—he held up his phone—“we’re going to give them something to report.” As he said that, his thumb hit the Send button on his phone. “Now, we sit and wait.”

It’d already been thirty minutes. And we continued to wait again.

“Kian.” What had he done?

Then, I saw it. A pizza delivery car pulled around the block and headed for the media. I frowned, thinking he would go to my building, but he didn’t. He parked right in front of the closest media teams and started walking to them. Kian’s phone buzzed, and at the same time, a frenzy came over them. Cameras that had been pointing at my building were whipped around. Reporters took their places in front of them, studying their phones for a moment. And in the midst of it, a second, a third, and then a fourth food delivery car descended before the media. All of the drivers were walking around, delivering food to surprised media crew.

Whatever happened, I knew Kian had something to do with it. For one second, we got an opening.

Kian said under his breath, “Now.”

Moving as if we were synced together, we got out of his sedan, quietly closed the doors, and went to the front door of my building. On the drive to my apartment, Kian said we’d be using the front door. They wouldn’t be expecting it. As I inserted my key and the door opened for us, they weren’t. No one yelled. No cameras were flashing pictures. There wasn’t a stampede coming from across the street for us.

We took the stairs, hurrying upstairs with only the scuffle of our shoes sounding from us. When we got to my floor, Kian stopped me before going through the door. “You ready for this?”

My heart was racing. I should’ve been out of breath, but I wasn’t. I was on an adrenaline high. We were about to sneak into my apartment old apartment, and somehow, I was going to talk this out with Erica. That was my hope.

It might’ve been a grandiose one, but when I’d woken up next to Kian this morning, I had to try. I just had to. Being with him last night did something to me. It changed me somehow. My outlook on life wasn’t in hiding anymore. I didn’t care if the nation was going to hate me or blame me or crucify me. They did it before, and I survived, and that was when I had no one. I had people this time. Or I hoped I did. I had a roommate. I had a friend who was obsessed with my roommate, and Jake…well, I didn’t know where he fit in, but I used to love him.