“Guess not,” I said, capping my bottle and setting it back down just as Kai started talking. Gibberish, as usual, but animated, as usual. I smirked. “You guys working out?”
“Oh,” Evie snorted, looking at Kai and crinkling her nose as he grabbed it. “Yeah, no, I’m not starting him on the lifting quite yet. Might wait till he turns three,” she joked, grinning as she removed his grip from her nose, making him break into his little baby laugh. “We just come here in the mornings because he likes to look at the pool.”
I nodded despite not quite getting it. “To just look at it?”
“Yeah.” She turned to me and snorted at the confusion on my face. “It’s a parent thing. You’ll get it when you have kids,” she said before catching herself. “I mean—if you have kids. Which you don’t have to. Obviously.”
I just nodded in the brief silence that followed, recognizing that Drew had clearly told Evie that I wasn’t interested in having a family with Keira.
The quiet went on for only a second longer before Evie nodded at the bag.
“Pretty good form there before. Used to box?” she asked.
“Not really,” I lied.
Adam had gotten me into it back in college. Basically on the very day we’d met thirteen years ago, when he was just some stranger who broke two noses on my behalf outside a shitty dive bar in San Leandro.
What the fight started over, I couldn’t say. Memories of that entire weekend were a blur, but if there was any one thing I couldn’t forget, it was the gleeful fucking grin on Adam’s face, and the genuinely joyful whoop he let out before jumping into a four-man brawl and sinking his fist into some roided-out asshole’s jaw, effectively neutralizing the mismatch I had on his group of drunk, piece of shit friends.
From that fateful night, we bonded over our shared love for cars and all things speed. I’d introduced him to snowboarding. He’d introduced me to boxing.
“Okay, well. I’ll let you go do your thing,” Evie said as Kai started fussing. “We’re just going to do a little more strolling here till he gets bored.”
I nodded, though I didn’t resume my workout with Evie and Kai still walking around the gym. Just the sight of her briefly peering my way while on the phone was enough to give me images of Drew suddenly appearing down here with his shit-eating grin and questions about what had me so fired up. So I opted to head back up to my apartment.
Despite the fact that I’d wanted to let Holland sleep.
I rubbed the back of my neck, taking awhile to notice Evie and Kai waving goodbye to me as I headed out of the gym. I waved back just before I headed out the door, my mind already occupied by the fact that I was returning to a not-empty apartment.
And a not-empty bed.
Admittedly, I’d planned on never doing an overnight when this arrangement started, let alone one at my home. But little about the past forty-eight hours had gone according to plan.
I’d brought Holland back to my apartment last night after what was the hottest fuck of my life, and hours later, we proceeded to top that orgasm with Holland on my bed, begging for my cum on all fours.
We’d both passed out after that.
And it would be a lie to say I didn’t enjoy what I saw first thing this morning.
She had looked so peaceful when I woke up, her breathing soft and her petite body curled up tightly just a foot away from where I lay on my back. She took up barely any space on the bed, but what she lacked there she made up in being a hell of a blanket stealer. Over the course of the night, she’d somehow managed to collect the majority of my heavy down comforter, wrapping herself in it and disappearing inside like it was a cocoon, everything but her eyes and nose burrowed deep into the Swiss cotton.
She was so adorable it was hard to process that she was the same girl who had the power to drive me up a fucking wall. The same girl I couldn’t stop thinking about for long enough to complete a three-day business trip.
In just a few weeks, she’d turned me upside down. Obliterated the stability of my long-practiced routine. For so long, I’d been rigid about my habits, how I preferred to do things, just to ensure that I was in full control of every situation.
And now this.
Of all things, I shook my head, because of all things to send me into a tailspin, I didn’t expect it to be Holland Maxwell. But then again.
My jaw tensed as I rode the elevator up to my apartment.
I probably should’ve known.
My limbs were still tight and restless, in need of calm as I rode the elevator up to my apartment.
But just as Holland was my problem, she was my solution, because the moment the elevator doors opened into my foyer, I heard the sound of music coming from the kitchen. Along with the light clattering of plates. Maybe pans.
An instinctive frown furrowed my brow as I headed for the kitchen, but once I got there, I found myself suppressing my grin.