She kissed his collarbone and carefully lifted her body away from his before flopping on her side next to him. He wanted to hold her, to keep her close, but the reality of his softening cock and the condom that needed to be disposed of forced him up and into her bathroom.
Tessa followed on shuffling, sleepy feet and pressed a kiss to his shoulder. “It’s late. You should stay.”
* * *
The words were out of her mouth before she could stop herself. This was not supposed to be the point of this. This was supposed to be a simple, uncomplicated, no-strings-attached rebound hookup. Feelings and sleepovers were not supposed to be involved. But now that she’d said it, she knew she wouldn’t rescind it. Tessa hated sleeping alone.
“Are you sure?”
“I have to be up early, but if you want to…”
She’d been there when he held her against his chest after he came; Evan wasn’t going to say no. She’d felt the reluctance in his limbs to let her go when she’d shifted to let him slide out of her. He was going to stay.
“Okay.”
They awkwardly sidled around each other in her tiny bathroom, cleaning up and getting ready for bed. Everyone glossed over this part, the messy humanness of sex. No wonder movies always cut to the morning after, or had the dude bounding out of bed as soon as it was over. Her heart twisted wondering what Jacob had done with the others. If he’d excused himself to their bathrooms, borrowed their toothpaste and their washcloths and gone on his way home. Where she’d waited like a fool.
Jacob was the last person she needed to be thinking about with Evan waiting next to her bed in his underwear, softly smiling at her.
“I didn’t want to claim a side.”
“I’ll be up first, so I’ll take the outside.”
He scooted under the covers against the wall. Ginsburg had already claimed her spot at his feet, and she looked up at Tessa full of kitty indignance for keeping her up so late. She sat, double-checked her alarm for the morning, and slid down along the edge of the mattress, afraid to touch him. Touching led to spooning led to attachment. She wasn’t here to get attached.
A large hand skimmed her hip. “Are you for or against snuggling?”
She certainly wasn’t going to be able to fall asleep perched on the edge of the bed. She scooted back against her better judgment, landing her butt against the soft curve of his belly. “For it.”
His beard tickled the back of her neck as he settled in against her. “Me too.”
“You seem like a cuddler.”
A heavy arm circled her waist, pulling her close with a satisfied hum. How was she supposed to resist an actual goddamn teddy bear in her bed? “G’night.”
His breathing slowed and deepened while Tessa stared out the window on the other side of the room. Caught between the comforting weight of another body in her bed—of Evan in her bed—and the sick, roiling sense that she’d made a huge mistake, she watched shadows chase over the brick building across the street. She wasn’t ready for this. She shouldn’t have done this. And now he was here, in her bed, sleeping soundly, and all she could think about was her shitty ex and all the ways he’d betrayed her.
It wasn’t fair. She wanted to enjoy this. She had enjoyed it. The look on his face when she’d told him to strip naked and jerk off for her while she had her hand down her own pants would be burned into her brain forever. She’d never had the guts to risk that with Jacob. Some part of her had always known he was looking for a reason to trade her in for a political wife, not a political ally.
She could picture his sneering face. “You fucked the burnout bartender? Classy, Tessa, really classy.”
If she’d been alone, she would have punched her pillow, kicked and groaned against the mattress, trying to get his voice out of her head. She would have risked a pissed-off cat and hauled a sleeping Ginsburg into her arms. The poor thing was almost used to it at this point, being treated like a stuffed animal when Tessa’s creeping doubts took on Jacob’s voice late at night.
As if sensing her distress, Evan tightened his hold on her and nuzzled into the back of her neck. The solid weight of him against her was certainly better than her disgruntled cat. So she’d fucked the burnout bartender. Her choices in partners weren’t a reflection of her professional worth or competence. If they were, being with that asshole for so long would have disqualified her long ago. She’d made her choice, and it wouldn’t last, but just for tonight, she had a man in her bed who wanted her.
4
Tessa cursed her alarm and slapped the front of her phone to hit snooze, barely coming out of sleep to do it. The sunrise clock across the room was starting to light up, in fifteen minutes, it would kick on to the local public radio station. Next to her, Evan grumbled and shifted, earning him a sharp meow of reproach from Ginsburg, who’d slept at his feet, the traitor.
Evan. Next to her. Shit. A tidal wave of anxious regret swamped her. He’d talked about blowing off steam, she thought they were on the same page, then everything had been so blurry and intimate and close and fuck it all, she should have sent him home last night.
He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close, kissed the back of her neck. “Morning.”
Dammit, dammit, dammit. This was supposed to be efficient means of distancing herself from the cheating sack of shit who’d been the last person she’d slept with, a wedge, a crowbar to help her move on. Stress relief. Not sleepovers and sweetness and definitely not her traitorous body pressing against his and wiggling her hips into his groin.
But she couldn’t resist the way his beard tickled her neck, and the way he was all soft and warm and sleepy behind her. The way even her damn cat liked him. Then again, Ginsburg was the kind of asshole who could have been found sleeping on Evan’s face because she sensed he was allergic to her. Or chewing on his shoes in protest of having her section of mattress taken over by large feet.
Tessa smiled thinking of how many times Jacob had cursed Ginsburg for nomming on his loafers during the night. She should have taken the massive hint her cat had been laying down. What did it say about Evan that her furry little monster was cuddled up with his large feet, perfectly content to share the bed with no protest, no chewed shoes, no face-sleeping, no yowling in three am indignation?
The radio kicked on, drowning out her thoughts with the top of the hour national news. Once she’d believed she wanted to be in Washington, that she wanted to shape policy on the national stage. But she’d realized there was plenty of power for change at the state level and she was a civil servant through and through. She wasn’t using her position on staff to launch a run for office. She was happy to research and draft policy, even contribute to the odd campaign speech, but she had no desire to be a household name. She wasn’t going to be the next young woman elected to Congress then pilloried for every minute detail of her past by the GOP and the national press.
The news switched to a pre-recorded report in which someone interviewed hyper-conservative voters for the millionth time and Tessa’s blood pressure rose. The story never changed. Racism, homophobia, xenophobia, an unshakeable belief in their own white martyrdom and the illusion that old jobs were coming back were not news. Every media outlet in the country and plenty abroad had been rehashing these stories—down to interviewing the same people multiple times—for years now. And it still made her blood boil.
But it did launch her out of bed. How could Evan stay away? There was so much left to be done, so much that needed fixing. They might never convince people like the woman on the radio—at that precise moment matter-of-factly stating that she considered the reporter a second-class citizen because she was Muslim—that their fear of anyone who didn’t look like them was not only not going to help them, but was wrong. Jesus would not fucking approve, lady.
She slapped the switch to turn off the radio, but kept the light on. Evan rose up on an elbow, the sheet falling away from his chest. She’d seen what this life had done to him, had done to others, but she still couldn’t und
erstand how he could leave it behind.
She should never have brought him home. He wasn’t the right kind of crowbar to exorcise her demons. She wanted to like Evan, she knew he was smart, that he had convictions, he should have been catnip boyfriend material. But he wasn’t. And it frankly pissed her off.
* * *
Tessa paced her apartment like a caged animal. Evan hated hearing those bullshit reports every day too, but this seemed like something bigger. Something perhaps to do with the fact the she’d slept with him last night and now regretted it. That she would turn out like the others who couldn’t or wouldn’t understand why he’d ditched his education and his professional life to sling drinks. She’d never leave politics, and she’d never understand why he had to.
He sat up and moved to retrieve his clothes from the floor. The sex had been great, and he’d liked sleeping next to her, he’d even liked her cat snoozing on his feet. But the antihistamines were starting to wear off and he could see a tirade forming with every tight circle she made in the tiny apartment. He didn’t need to hear it again.
“Tessa.” She turned on her heel to face him, arms crossed over her silly sleep T-shirt. Fuck, he liked her. He liked her whimsical streak. He did not like the face she was making at him right now.
“How could you leave?”
So they were doing this. Great. “I didn’t really have a choice.”
“You could go back. You could work for another agency. You don’t have to be at the state house to do good things. But you’re sitting behind a bar—”
He stopped her before she could say the words that always followed. Wasting your potential. He’d heard it from everyone. From his family, from his former colleagues, from women he tried to date. As soon as people found out what he used to do compared to what he did now, they trotted out that same tired line. His potential, his education and his sanity were his to do what he chose with.
“How about you don’t finish that sentence, Tessa.” He yanked his pants up his thighs and thrust his arms into his undershirt. “I had a nice time last night, so let’s not ruin it, okay? I’ll see you around.” He grabbed his coat from the back of her door and blustered out of her apartment before either of them could say anything else.
Her unspoken words stung, regardless of how many times he’d told himself—and how many therapy sessions he’d spent on it—that potential, real or imagined, wasn’t the point. The point was to live a life that had meaning for him. That being good to himself meant he had the ability to do good for others. He wasn’t useful to anyone shaking with caffeine and anxiety. He couldn’t do much when his body shut down on him, unable to eat, unable to sleep more than a couple of hours a night. It had gotten so bad he’d had sleep paralysis on a regular basis and that was not an experience he wished on anyone. The people who might deserve that kind of terror probably slept like babies on their piles of conservative super PAC cash.
People like Tessa didn’t see that he donated money and time to local nonprofits, that he still acted as something of a policy advisor from behind the bar. She didn’t see that staffers still knew where to find him, that the resources and the relationships that he had didn’t fade away to nothing when he’d handed in his notice to Senator Sheehan. He’d even fucking offered to help her, and she only saw the washout, the guy who couldn’t hack it, who’d given up.
The only person who didn’t treat him like a mildly useful pariah was Nancy. Sure, she always said she missed him, but she never tried to guilt him into coming back either. She knew what the stakes were. She’d been the one to find him collapsing on the hallway floor, choking on stomach acid the morning of a major committee hearing.
He was still fighting the part of his brain that believed Tessa. That agreed with her that even if he couldn’t go back to the state house, he belonged in the offices of some non-profit or state agency. She didn’t see that it wasn’t any different. Fighting for funding and policy changes was still fighting for funding and policy change, no matter which desk you sat behind.
He walked back to the bar in the early-morning cold. Whatever the calendar said, they hadn’t shaken off winter quite yet, and definitely not at six-thirty in the morning. He thanked whatever lesser gods were looking out for him that his car hadn’t been ticketed overnight, climbed behind the wheel, and drove home, cursing himself for thinking this could be different.
Evan collapsed into bed when he got back to his place, but his brain wouldn’t turn off. A never-ending loop of better comebacks and snappier answers, a litany of all the things he did that proved he was still committed to his ideals chased their tails behind his stubbornly closed eyelids. The mental chatter was one of the worst parts of dealing with anxiety. He could conjure up every foolish thing he’d ever said, every weak retort, going back to his childhood. And his brain liked to play his mistakes on a loop at three in the morning.
He should never have gone home with her. He could have flirted with her every time he brought her a drink or a coffee, and offered up whatever insight into the machinations of state government he had, and left it at that. He didn’t need to know about her adorable planner stickers or her cat or anything about her. She should have been a cute girl who came into the bar sometimes. That way she couldn’t have disappointed him.
He wouldn’t have to know what she looked like naked, what it was like to watch her standing in front of him with her hand down her pants, making him wait, taking control of the situation. He did not need to know how very fucking much he’d liked that.
But he did those things, he knew those things. He’d slept beside her with her back pressed to his chest in her narrow bed, Ginsburg keeping his feet toasty and grumbling every time he moved. It had been nice. Too nice.
He should have known it wasn’t going to last. It never did.
In a city filled with civil servants, it was near-impossible to escape them in the dating pool. When he’d been at the state house, he’d been perhaps overly-cautious about potential conflicts of interest. And he’d overworked himself to the point of collapse, so dating hadn’t really been on his mind apart from the occasional hookup to take the edge off.
When that had stopped working, he’d replaced it with more work. Like if he could just do more, churn out more research, more data, more projections, he could somehow make it okay, that he could save the people he needed to save. And it wasn’t enough. The last legislative session he’d been a part of had been tightly-contested, with tie-breaker votes and possibly the worst governor in the state’s history signing off on legislation that barely passed while toadying up to Washington, angling for a cabinet appointment. It had broken him.
He’d clawed his way back to some semblance of stability, keeping enough of a barrier between himself and state government to keep himself sane, but restaurant hours weren’t great for meeting people either. Unless they were on the other side of his bar, and he’d never been one to mix work with pleasure. Until Tessa.
It had been a mistake. His therapist was going to have a field day with his poor boundaries between his old life and his new one. But first he was going to have to find a way to shut down his brain and get a nap if he was taking Lex’s shift tonight.
* * *
Tessa arrived at work, armed with the to-do list she’d made over her daily breakfast of high-protein yogurt and fruit, followed by a cup of coffee. If her handwriting was shaky on today’s page, if she’d managed to leave a coffee ring on the heavily marked-up and page-flagged piece of proposed legislature in her bag, well, she hadn’t gotten much sleep last night.
Her stomach threatened to launch her sensible breakfast right back up every time she thought about it. She’d been a total asshole to Evan. Which made unfortunate sense. She liked him, so obviously she would push him away. Given her history of exceedingly poor choices in partners, it was almost without a doubt that Evan would turn out to be a total nightmare if she spent any more time with him.
It didn’t make it okay that she’d been mean about it. Jud
ging him for things he couldn’t change, couldn’t help. She was in no position to tell someone to threaten their health and wellbeing for the sake of an ideal. She’d bailed on her old position the first chance she got because she’d gotten dumped. She couldn’t say shit about commitment.
The look on his face when he’d asked her not to finish that sentence haunted her through their morning staff meeting. She stumbled when Nancy asked for an update on repro rights and the budget bill. She knew what she was supposed to say like the back of her hand, but her tongue wouldn’t spit it out. She had meetings set up, she knew which fence-sitters to squeeze, what they could compromise on and what they would never give an inch to if anyone in this office could help it. Healthcare access was Tessa’s life. And damned if she was going to let worrying about a guy get in her way.
When the meeting broke up and everyone shuffled back to their cramped desks, Nancy pulled Tessa into her office, the only room in the place with a door that closed.
“Everything okay?”
“Fine. Long night. It won’t happen again.”
Nancy sighed. “Tessa, I appreciate your commitment, truly I do. But I don’t want to see you run yourself into the ground. You’re allowed to have a life outside this office. Unlike our colleagues in Washington, we actually have time to read the bills we’re voting on, so please don’t feel that you have to stay up all night and rush to get this done.”
Of course she was. In theory. She’d taken a guy home last night. And look how that turned out. She was perfectly content to let Nancy think she’d been up all night studying the appropriations bill. “I know.”
Rogue Ever After (The Rogue Series Book 7) Page 24