Reckless (Irresistible 6)

I could

n’t remember if I’d put up much more of a fight about staying or not, but it no longer mattered, because at this point I wasn’t moving. It was well past 10PM and I was tipsy, tired, and very cozily snuggled in the plush sheets of Adam’s king-sized bed while he lay ten feet to my right on the couch in a white V-neck and sweats.

And thanks to the mental fogginess, I kept drifting in and out of realizing—despite how quiet and relaxed we were—that what we were doing right now was absolutely wild.

Because for how close Adam and I were, we had definitely never done this before.

We had never spent non-work-related time together, let alone hung out in pajamas together in his hotel room late at night. We’d also never gone such long stretches without trading barbs or being snarky in some way, and all this would be actively mind-fucking me right now if it weren’t for the fact that my brain was simultaneously exhausted and in a million other places right now.

It was halftime of the Lakers game when I’d turned on my side to grab my phone off the nightstand, but then a whole thirty seconds passed before I actually looked at my phone, because lying on my side, Adam was now directly in my eye line.

And as much as I didn’t want him to be, he was very distracting.

His long body was stretched out with one leg bent and one arm behind his head, and for how relaxed and casual the position was, it really did stupid wonders for showing off his hyper-athletic build.

I was basically forced to look.

With his arm folded behind his head, his bulging bicep was just right in my face and I could see his sculpted lats straining against the soft cotton of his tee—which, annoyingly enough, had ridden up, giving me a slight but very noticeable peek of his very deep-carved hip bone.

This is your boss, I told myself.

When I was this level of drunk and emotionally exhausted, it was all I had in my arsenal in terms of mental pep talks about not checking out certain people. Adam. Boss. Don’t look, I told myself in a caveman voice, which made my stupid drunk ass laugh.

Adam peered over at me. “What?”

I blinked as I averted my eyes to my phone. “Nothing. Just putting Caspar’s number on silent,” I said since it was exactly what I turned over to do in the first place.

Adam had turned back to the TV after his initial question, but now he was looking at me again, his eyebrows pulled together in a frown. “He’s still texting?” he asked.

“Yep,” I said, my bleary eyes skimming the latest message. The hundredth version of “we need to talk about this” with some dig thrown in about my maturity. “God, why the hell does he think this is salvageable?” I muttered.

“Because he’s delusional in every sense of the word.”

“This is true,” I murmured distractedly as I clicked around on my phone, proceeding to look at things I told myself I wouldn’t look at till Adam firmly interrupted.

“AJ. Stop.”

I didn’t look up as I frowned. “Stop what?”

“Facebook-stalking the girl he was with.”

My eyebrows lifted as I paused mid-scroll, peering up to see Adam still watching the game. Damn. He hadn’t even been looking at me while I was doing it. But I wasn’t totally surprised. Sometimes he just had a sense.

“It’s just I recognize her,” I said quietly as I put down my phone. Grabbing a pillow, I hugged it against me. “I mean… pretty hard not to.”

Adam looked over at me. “Why?”

“Because she has green and blue hair.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Does she also shop at Hot Topic?”

I cracked a faint smirk. “Well. She’s definitely young. Still in college,” I said, feeling a twisting in my chest as I remembered when Caspar first introduced me to her in December. His new PA who was in her second year of undergrad at USC. “I remember thinking she was really shy and awkward, but I figured it was just because she was a kid. Not even old enough to drink,” I said with a weak laugh of disbelief as I zoned out at a random spot on the floor.

Uh oh. I could feel a ramble coming on, and though I wasn’t looking at him, I could see Adam’s head still turned to study me closely, as if he sensed I was going into a place.

“And it’s not that I ever imagined Caspar would cheat, but if someone told me I had to, I don’t think I would’ve pictured a college kid with green hair who can’t even make five seconds of eye contact at a time. I just… I never would’ve thought that’d be what he’d want more than me,” I said. But I’d barely finished my sentence before Adam cut in.

“It’s not, AJ,” he said sternly.