“Feisty.” He grinned, folding his arms over his chest. “Is that an after-effect of the adrenaline?”
“What adrenaline?”
“The adrenaline from when I hugged you and your heart beat so hard it was practically punching me in the chest?”
I swallowed hard and jerked my chin into the air. “It was the blood.”
“Yeah, all right.” His eyes flashed with something indiscernible, and I held his gaze for a moment before I pulled away and grabbed my purse from where I’d dumped it on the floor.
“I’m gonna go to bed,” I said, holding my purse in close to me. “’Night.”
He followed me with his gaze when I walked past him, and he didn’t say a word until I was about to shut my door. “’Night, Ava.”
CHAPTER TEN
* * *
AVA
Free The Nipples
Mornings were not my thing.
Especially not mornings that featured Ethan Hawkins.
Especially not mornings that followed a night where I’d not only smashed a glass he’d cut his hand on, but he’d called me out for my stupid little heart beating crazy fast.
I was mad at myself. Mad because I had no control over my feelings. I should have gotten over this by this point in my life. I’d had relationships and I’d had real feelings for all those guys, especially Butler.
Sure, it had been toxic at times where it was so on-off, but I had loved him.
I think.
My feelings for him had made sense, at least. The ones for Ethan didn’t. They never had, and I genuinely couldn’t give an explanation for why I felt the way I did about him.
I didn’t want to feel this way. I wanted to reach inside and tear them out, throw them away, stamp on them, whatever.
I just wanted to make it stop. At any cost. I really didn’t care how that happened, in all honesty.
The problem was that I didn’t know how to make it happen. I’d literally tried everything, and it really wasn’t true that getting under someone else will make you get over someone.
It was a crock of shit.
I flipped my head over and pulled my dark hair into a topknot. It was a total mess, but I wasn’t going anywhere until I had to go to work tonight. God only knew that yesterday’s run was enough for this week.
I slipped my glasses onto my face and yawned. Getting up from the side of the bed where I’d been sitting while I woke up, I adjusted my tank top and let go of another yawn that was so intense I almost walked into the wall.
See?
Not a morning person.
At all.
I scratched my hip and stumbled into the kitchen. It was stupidly bright in here, which meant Ethan was up and already at work. Honestly, he worked eight ‘til four, so I would be worried if he was still here.
Another yawn forced its way out of me. Jesus Christ on a cracker, what was wrong with me this morning?
I wriggled my finger in my ear then shivered. Ugh. I hit the button on the coffee machine and washed my hands while it warmed up, then made my coffee.
Mm. Awake juice.
The best kind of juice. Unless it was grape juice. With alcohol in it.
Wine, okay.
Wine.
I took a big sip of hot coffee. A bang sounded from somewhere in the apartment, and I froze, hands cupped around the mug.
There were three options.
There was a ghost.
The hedgehog was loose.
Or Ethan was here.
Last I knew, there wasn’t a ghost. Not since Reagan’s old neighbor who claimed to be Wiccan came and smudged the entire building for… Well, nobody knew, but since her old building had burned down, we gave the woman a pass.
Even though she’d invaded my bedroom with her stinky, burning hay bale.
The second option was that Ethan was here, but I already knew he was at work. He was the only one of us who opened the curtains before the awake juice had been finished.
The sun was a bright little thing.
I was not a fan.
The only other possible option was that the hedgehog was loose.
That was problematic, to say the least. Not knowing would drive me crazy, but what would I do if I opened Ethan’s bedroom door, and it ran out? I didn’t know how to touch it. Or what to do with it. Or if it would bite.
Oh, God, what if it bit me? Did hedgehogs carry rabies? Any other weird diseases I didn’t know about?
Who the fuck had a hedgehog as a pet?
I had to know. I had to know if the spiky little prick had broken free.
I put my coffee down and steeled myself. That’s right. I, Ava Parker, was going to be brave. Braless, in a white tank top and pink panties with a coconut print and yesterday’s mascara on my eyelashes.
Yes.
That was how women should go into battle.
Men would be too distracted by our braless boobs to shoot us. Win-win.
I shook my head to refocus myself and got on with it. Noises were still coming from Ethan’s room—shuffling noises that closely resembled what I imagined a fugitive hedgehog would sound like while trying to find a hideout.
So I did what any sane person would do.
I opened the door.
Right on a very naked Ethan, standing in the middle of the room, rifling through his dresser.
I screamed.
He yelled.
I screamed some more.
It was really, really ineffective at solving the problem at hand.
I slammed the door shut and ran out into the kitchen. My heart was beating like a drum, and the mild panic I felt at seeing his bare ass had my hands shaking with adrenaline.
Oh. My. God.
Why hadn’t I knocked?
“What the hell are you doing?” Ethan asked, running out into the kitchen in his boxers. “Ava!”
“I thought you were at work!” I blurted out. Like that explained everything. Jesus.
“Do you regularly go into my room when I’m not here?”
“No! I heard a bang and some noises and I thought the hedgehog was free.”
He opened his mouth to say something but stopped himself. He rubbed his fingertips against his temple for a moment and blew out a long breath. “And what exactly did you intend to do if he was free? You can’t even look at him, let alone touch him to put him back in his cage.”
I shuffled side to side. “Maybe scoop him up in a pan and drop him back in?”
“Scoop him up in—fucking hell. You haven’t had your coffee yet, have you?”
“Why am I at fault here? Why aren’t you at work? Why are you naked in your bedroom in the middle of the day?”
“It’s not the middle of the day,” he replied, approaching the island and leaning against it. “I was naked because I was changing my underwear, and that requires the removal of clothing. I’m not at work because someone broke a glass last night and cut my finger open, and my boss doesn’t want me bleeding in someone’s engine today. And to answer your last question, you’re at fault because you stormed into my bedroom.”
That was tough logic to argue.
“And now you’re extremely frustrating because you’re standing here in your underwear, and you may as well be shirtless because that shirt is thinner than my grandpa’s hair.”
I clamped my arm over my boobs. “I didn’t know you were here, or I’d put on a bra.”