by Ella James
Still, I’m disappointed when he starts stretching without another word to me. During our workout, he teaches me more about the vulnerable places on the head. He has his fingers threaded through my hair half of the time, rubbing lightly on various pressure points and making my entire body burn. The rest of the time, I’m focused on getting my hands around his neck, or finding the best angle for gouging his overly perfect eyes out.
The few times he demonstrates a move on his own, I let my hungry eyes rove over him. I sift my feelings through the filter of “just friends.” How long has it been since I had a guy friend? (College). I feel this warm swell concern for him, this proprietary feeling that he’s mine to take care of. And yeah, I also kind of want his body. Is this what it’s like to have a male friend?
We touch and talk and orbit each other—acting like nothing happened the other night, like nothing’s ever happened between us except just sparring in my yard—and I tell myself that I can be his friend. I’d take that in a heartbeat if it was that or nothing. And it is. It’s that or nothing, I tell myself sternly.
Entertaining any other option—even for a millisecond—is proof that I’m losing my grip on reality.
We end our workout with some free-form sparring. I can tell he’s letting me “win”; I take it anyway, and bow theatrically when we’re finished.
As soon as he starts stretching, I feel heat prickle my cheeks. I stretch alongside him until he’s bending down toward his toes, and then, when he can’t see my face, I say, “I made three different types of cookies. Peanut butter the one night, M&M last night, and chocolate chip today. You want to come in, or want me to run go get them?”
He rises to his full height and spreads his legs, then bends over to the left side. “You don’t have to.” His voice is soft and low. I have to run his words through my mind twice to convince myself he said them.
Then I smack a hand over my heart. “You don’t want my cookies?”
I swear, I think the asshole rolls his eyes.
I sigh and wag a finger at him. “You’re grumpy. I had a sense of it, but I couldn’t tell for sure while we were sparring. You’re pretty good at hiding your emotions, Secret Agent Ranger Guy.”
Rising up again to roll his shoulders, he blinks at me.
I nod. “Like that.” I shrug, determined not to sink into a sea of insecurity. I whirl around. “I’m going to get the cookies,” I call over my shoulder. “Don’t run off on me.”
I didn’t mean to reference the other night, but apparently my big mouth has a mind of its own. Typical me. Typical pre me. I feel a rush of warmth at the realization.
He makes me feel like me, I imagine telling Helga. I’m not sure if she’d be glad or appalled. Possibly appalled.
I pile three Ziplock freezer bags full of cookies into my arms and walk back out onto the front porch. I’m surprised to find Barrett sitting on the top step, leaning over his lap with his head in his hands. I drop down beside him on the stair and put the three bags at our feet.
When he shifts his wary eyes to me, I wait for him to say something. Instead he looks back down.
What should I do?
I wish I knew him better.
After a minute staring at the bags of cookies, wondering why I feel such a compulsion to take care of him, I decide it doesn’t really matter. I do—and that’s the thing. Sometimes people just connect, and this is how I feel toward him. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. In that spirit, I pony up and throw an arm around his shoulders.
They’re harder, wider than I realized they would be, and once my arm is resting on his strong back, I feel tingles spread through me. I still my body, feeling for movement, but he is frozen too. It’s your move. I take a deep, slow breath and spread my hand out on a ridge of muscle.
Then I lean my head against his shoulder.
I’m not thinking about our height difference, so I think my cheek will press against his shoulder. Instead my forehead bumps against the hard swell of his bicep. It’s unyielding. No more receptive to my attempt at comfort than the man himself.
Without meaning to, I laugh, and all the tension in me ebbs. I rub my forehead against his arm, feeling ridiculous.
Eventually, I guess even Barrett gets curious; he lifts his head so he can see my face. “What are you doing?” His face is twisted in a look of total incredulity.
I giggle. “Forehead-humping your arm. Can’t you tell?”
“Yeah.” He makes this husky, half-breath-half-laugh sound, and I feel a zing of victory.
“I’m trying to un-grouch you through osmosis.”
When he cuts his eyes sideways at me, I find his handsome face skeptical. I grin and rub against his arm some more.
Finally—a real laugh from him. “I don’t know about you, Gwen.”
“I don’t know about you either. Who refuses homemade cookies?” I arch my brows accusingly.
“Someone who’s not hungry.”
I hold his gaze as mine softens. My arm around him squeezes. I don’t know what to say, so I just sit beside him, looking at his somber face, into his striking eyes, and try to send good vibes.
“You know…” I let my arm slide down his back, so it’s looser around him. “After my wreck, I had some terrible nightmares. I don’t have them as much now, but I had some in the last week. I find that if I’m stressed out or something shifts in my day-to-day life, sometimes they crop up again. I have this journal where I write them out. And then I go back in and like…re-script them. Change what happens. I know it probably sounds kind of stupid, but it really does help.”
With my arm still up against his back, I feel him exhale. After a second during which his body feels completely inert, he turns to me with raised brows and twisted lips.
“Is there a reason you told me that?” His tone is surprisingly sharp.
My pulse pounds in irritation. I give him my best oh really look.
“I’m fine,” he says. I swear, I think he grits his teeth.
I feel his back knot up under my hand. Riiight.
“Okay,” I say airily. “You seem tired, that’s all.”
He looks at me strangely, almost angrily. “Yes, we have established that. I don’t see why you give a fuck.”
My heart squeezes, making my head feel light and spinny. I move my arm from him and hug myself. “Because we’re friends.”
“Are we?”
SIXTEEN
GWENNA
I’m not aware of what I do, or what kind of look I give him. I just know it takes a couple of seconds to draw my next breath, and when I do, my pulse gallops and my cheeks feel hot. I jump up and turn around, toward my door.
I feel Barrett’s fingers wrap around my arm. “Dammit.” This time, it’s his eyes seeking mine. I train mine on his green shirt.
“I’m sorry, Gwenna. I’m just…” He scrubs his forehead with his right hand, then lets out a loud sigh. “I’m an asshole.”
He looks so contrite, so worried and—indeed—so tired, my anger melts in a few seconds.
I press my lips together, not quite willing to let him know that yet. I sink back down onto the porch step. If he doesn’t want to be here anymore tonight, this is his chance to go.
Just go.
Instead he sits beside me, searching my face with his gray-blue eyes. “Gwen…” He tilts his head. “I’m sorry.” With no warning, his arm wraps around my back. He pulls me gently to him, so my shoulder and right side come up against his warm chest.
“It’s okay.” I try to stay still, so I won’t touch him more than I have to, and keep my eyes trained on the Ziplock bags. I cut my eyes toward him, so he believes me when I say, “Forgiven.”
I wait for him to move his heavy arm. He doesn’t. I might not be angry with him, but I’m still embarrassed. I debate wriggling out of his grasp and going into my house, but I’m supposed to be his friend, so I just sit there, wondering what made me think I should put myself out there. What made me even think he wanted that.
&nb
sp; Friends? We’re neighbors. The only reason we know each other is that I kicked him in the head.
As if he hears my thoughts, his hand flattens on my back and he says, “You’re a good friend, Gwenna. Better than I am.”
I let a long breath out. I tip my head back, looking at the sky through bare limbs and crinkling leaves.
He shifts his weight a little, moving closer to me, so I’m almost underneath his arm. I still feel the weight of his hand just under my bra strap on the left side of my back.
My throat aches. I just…can’t look at him. I keep my head tipped back.
A moment later, his voice rumbles near my ear. “See something up there?”
“Stars.” The word is smaller, tighter than intended. It seems, for better or for worse, all I want now is to go inside. I don’t understand this weird pseudo-friendship we have, and now I’m not so sure I want to.
“You like the stars?” he asks.
I like his sexy, raspy voice—damn it all. I exhale slowly, so he can’t feel it. “Who doesn’t?”
There’s a beat of silence, in which crackling leaves chase each other across my brownish grass. Then he moves his arm off me and steps down off the porch. He holds a hand out. “C’mon.”
“Huh?”
He reaches down and wraps his hands around my waist, under my arms. “C’mon, Gwenna.” He lifts me up. “You ever get called Gwen?” He sets me on my feet, then seems to re-evaluate and throws me over his shoulder. The motion is surprisingly controlled and gentle.
After a second of shock at our little plot twist, I shriek and mock-beat his back. “Where are you taking me, you freaking Sasquatch?”
He laughs. “Sasquatch?”
“When I saw you, when I kicked you, I thought you were Sasquatch.”
I can feel his laughter in the movement of his shoulders. “That’s some funny shit.”
“Yeah, you’re like…part giant.”
His arm around my back tightens. “To answer you,” he says as we get into his yard, “it’s somewhere good. You’ll see.”
I think I know where he might be taking me when we start up the stairs to the third floor of his house, but I don’t know for sure until he sets me in the second floor hall outside the bedroom doors and reaches for a notch there in the ceiling. He tugs it lightly, pulling a big square of ceiling downward just a little. With his left hand, he pushes me gently back.
He turns to me and smiles, dimpled and panty-melting. “Do you trust me?”
I arch a brow. “Should I?”
He looks stricken.
“Yes.” I roll my eyes. “Why wouldn’t I? Although I will say,” I tell him as he pulls the stairs all the way down, “if you chop me into little pieces, I will haunt your shit so hard…”
He gives a low laugh. “Well, I don’t need that.”
I smile sweetly. “Then you better treat me like a BFF.”
He gives me a funny little look—a kind of long pre-smile in which he somehow, indescribably, just looks like he could smile. And then he does.
My heart skips several beats.
“I’ll go first. To test the ladder,” he says.
As I watch him climb into the attic and turn on a light, I have a strange déjà vu feeling: high school. Butterflies and flop sweat and lust, I think as he leans back down over the ladder.
“We’re good,” that low voice rumbles. “Come on up.”
He hovers near the top of the ladder as I climb. I’m watching his face as I step fully up into the attic space, so I see him opening his mouth, seemingly to protest. Then I get a peek at the room behind him and my jaw drops.
The room looks like—it is—a little library. It’s a rectangular space about the size of a school classroom, with a cedar floor, exposed rafters, and whitewashed walls. Right out in front of me, punched into the wall that forms the top line of the rectangle, there is a quilted, queen-sized bed that folds out of the wall. The long wall to my right is nothing but built-in shelving, packed with books, trinkets, and even a little lantern. To my left, along that long wall, there is an antique desk, a fish-shaped floor lamp beside a cozy leather armchair, and—perhaps the room’s most awesome feature—the most giant window seat I’ve ever seen: about the size of my kitchen table. The window is three giant sheets of glass arranged like the top of a hexagon.
My eyes rove the room again as my hand covers my mouth. “Holy hell, this is beyond adorable.”
I turn a circle, noting an antique rocking chair, a circular woven rug, a random gnome statue, and tiny wind chimes hanging from the ceiling near the window seat.
The only thing I’ve ever heard about the Haywoods’ attic was something about a homemade telescope. I search the room for it, and when I don’t see it, my gaze boomerangs to Barrett.
He’s got his arms folded in front of his chest, and I’m pretty sure the look on his face is a smug one.
“This is fabulous,” I say. “I may move in.”
He smiles. “Turn to your left.”
“That window seat is awesome. I think I should sit in it.”
I’m almost to it when I notice the left sheet of glass seems to have a hole at the bottom, near the seat’s padding.
Another step and I can it’s not a hole; it’s a little electronic panel of some kind, looking at first glance like a smaller version of the black Wii U box. One more step, and the low lamplight reveals the box to be a giant, T-Rex-sized pair of goggles. I climb up onto the seat’s padding and pull them out of the window—or rather, off a little shelf I can now see they’re sitting on—and watch, confused, as they trail a small, plastic-looking tube in from outside the window.
“It’s some kind of fiber optics,” Barrett says, coming up to stand behind me. “He had it set up so the telescope is on the roof and sends the image through that little tube that runs from telescope to goggles.”
I blink down at the goggles. “How random. And cool. I want to see.”
I turn them over, but I have no clue how to make them work, so when Barrett climbs up onto the padded cushion beside me, I hand them to him.
I watch his brows notch as he looks down at them, pressing a few buttons. He brings them up over his eyes, and I see his lips twitch.
“Nice,” he says, passing them to me. “Tell me what you see.”
I pull the goggles to my eyes and almost gasp.
“Is that— It looks like…the Milky Way? Like, the whole of it, right?”
It’s disconcerting to see such a vast view of the sky while sitting cross-legged on a padded seat. I blink a few times, awe-struck by the lovely spread of stars and soft light against the black of space. Maybe I wobble a little, because I feel Barrett’s hands on my shoulders, and I’m aware of being laid down. I pull the goggles off my face and see my head is on a long pillow that lines the bottom of glass pane that juts farthest out.
“I think you’re meant to lie down like that.” He’s right; there’s plenty of room for me to rest my head up against the top window pane, my legs out with the knees bent, so my shoes are against the cushion.
My eyes fly from the space beside me to Barrett, and then I put the goggles back over my eyes.
“There’s a manual downstairs that I’ve been thumbing through. When you want to see a different view, just let me know.”
I pull the goggles down. “What are my options?”
He takes them from me, punches a few buttons, and passes them back with a funny little smile.
I bring them to my eyes and find a molten-looking image that, though stained dark amber, I am sure must be the sun.
“Please tell me I don’t see that thing…moving.” I swallow hard, and Barrett laughs.
“You mean the surface of it?”
I struggle not to shudder. “Yes.”
I’m tempted to pull the goggles away from my face, because something about seeing the sun’s shifting surface makes me want to hurl.
“I think that’s supposed to be the fun part.” Barrett laughs.
“It’s…creepish. It looks kind of like… What are those little lines? It almost looks like geysers shooting up.”
“Sun spots? Or solar flares? Haywood had a long monologue written out on cue cards.” He laughs again. “Kind of like a tour of space. I guess he would go through it while guests looked through the goggles like you’re doing.”
I peek out from behind the goggles. “Do you remember any of it?”
“Some.”
Or maybe all. I remember how he didn’t have to write my phone number down on the porch that night as Barrett gives me what I’m sure must be Haywood’s geeky guided solar system tour, verbatim. The wording doesn’t sound like his, and sometimes after dropping a hardcore nerdy fact on me, I think I can hear him smirking.
I find myself giggling around Jupiter. A second later, I feel Barrett’s big hand on my knee. I draw the goggles away from my eyes and find him looking at me with arched brows and a shaming look.
“Are you laughing at your celestial tour guide?”
I wrap my hand around his. “Maybe.”
I’m hoping he’ll lie down beside me. Instead he moves his hand and changes my view again, zooming out so I can see the big dipper. About which he knows all the things.
When he’s finished unloading more data on me, I smile and hand the goggles to him. “I’m not going to ask how you know that stuff, you dork.”
“Nav,” he answers. His tongue darts over his lower lip. “Navigating.”
So, by constellations, I guess. “Were you a navigator in the Rangers?”
His eyebrows lift, his features making a poker face. “I was a lot of things.”
I want to ask—like really want to—but I’m not about to pry. There’s been enough drama tonight between the two of us, and despite how solicitous he’s being now, I don’t trust him not to go all moody on me again.
“That fits with my impression of you as a closet geek,” I tease.
His hand comes around my thigh, the fingers squeezing gently at a spot that makes me giggle. “You better watch yourself,” he teases.
It’s my turn to watch him as looks through the goggles for a few minutes, sitting cross-legged beside me. I make him tell me what he’s focused on, and this time I get the long, tragic tale of Artemis and Orion—Zeus’s daughter and her mortal human lover—and Scorpius, the scorpion Zeus used to kill Orion, who, as a mortal, was not supposed to cavort with royal Artemis.