“And you’ll sleep where? The bathtub?”
“It’s on my bucket list.”
He scrubs a hand over his face and opens his mouth, but I cut him off.
“I get that you’re trying to be nice to me, but the truth is, you’re doing me the hugest favor in the history of favors, and I was an asshole for not telling you that we were coming for a funeral, and so I would very much appreciate it if you’d take the bed, if for no other reason than I know how important sleep is to athletes and I really like the Thrusters to win so I need you to sleep well tonight, then sleep well tomorrow night, and then kill it on the ice Tuesday night so that I don’t have to have any lingering guilt about anything that goes down here, okay?”
“Do you actually breathe when you talk, or do you have secret gills somewhere?”
I flinch.
I don’t want to, but I can’t help it. It’s habit.
And now he’s doing that see-right-through-me thing where he looks ready to whip out a sword and slay dragons. “Talk,” he orders.
“I have a new client and I was going to set her up with D’Angelo from Cod Pieces but he started dating someone the night before I introduced them.”
“Talk about talking,” he growls. “Does someone tell you that you talk too much?”
Did someone take a blowtorch to my cheeks, or am I having a weird reaction to alcohol tonight? “Tyler. I’m a woman. Someone is always telling me I talk too much.”
He crosses his arms and glares, but he also goes a little pink in the cheeks above his thick beard, which is adorable.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess he’s told his sisters they talk too much a time or two in his life.
But the idea that he’s realizing it’s rude because he doesn’t want people telling me I talk too much is making him a little more attractive, and I can’t have that.
Tyler Jaeger doesn’t want me.
But he’s here, isn’t he?
I flick a hand at the room phone. “I’ll call down to the desk and ask for extra blankets and pillows. It’ll be like camping in a bathtub, plus, after a day in heels, it’ll feel good to have my feet elevated.”
“You’re sleeping on the bed.”
“You’re sleeping on the bed.”
“We’re both sleeping on the bed.”
“There’s not room.”
“That’s another thing—your parents are dicks. No one gets to judge you based on how you look or what size you are. No one. You know what’s important? How you feel. That’s what’s important. Fuck everyone, especially your parents, for telling you otherwise. If Donettes give you good energy and make you happy, eat the fucking Donettes, okay? Now get ready for bed, and get in the fucking bed, and go to sleep.”
His chest is heaving and those bright pink spots are growing over his beard. Fists clenched and tendons straining in his neck like he’s holding himself back from punching the wall. And I want to throw myself at him and kiss him until I can’t breathe.
I won’t.
I basically can’t.
Even if I thought he did want me, I’ve rejected him every possible way I can reject him. I don’t get to kiss him.
I surrendered that privilege when I didn’t try to contact him either after the thing in the fridge.
And I’ve never regretted anything more than I regret not being able to leap at him and kiss him until we’re tearing each other’s clothes off and trying that naked carnal humping thing again.
Not because I’m especially horny—though I’m getting there—but because no one has ever defended me to myself quite the way he is right now.
And until this moment, I didn’t know anyone needed to.
“I—” I start, but he brushes past me with another irritated noise, grabs his duffel bag, and slams the door to the bathroom.
“Get ready for bed, Muffy.”
Bed.
Right.
Sleeping.
With Tyler next to me.
Nope. No way. Nuh-uh. I’m sleeping in the bathtub. I am not sleeping in the bed next to him. For starters, because I like to sleep in a T-shirt and panties, and I don’t trust myself to not touch his bare leg with my bare leg. Next, because I’ve never shared a bed with a man overnight at all.
Ever.
And finally, because I like him.
I like him.
But I don’t like anybody. Not like that.
And why don’t you? a voice that sounds very much like Tyler’s pissed-off growly voice demands in my head. Because you’ve been absorbing all the subliminal messages from your parents for years that only thin, quiet, successful people deserve love?
Dammit.
I’ve cried seven oceans already today. I ran into Dr. Richardson, and he recognized me, and I recognized him. Veda’s lonely and I want to help her, but I can’t because I know I’ll let her down the same way I’ve let so many other clients down. I took Tyler to a funeral without warning and he passed out.
Today is not a good day.
But there’s this little flower of light struggling to poke its head out of my heart, a warmth that I don’t understand or recognize, and I think it’s because Tyler Jaeger doesn’t see me as a size fourteen disaster who still lives with her mom, has a failing matchmaker business that’s only miraculously still hanging on, and who’s in very real danger of defaulting on the student loans that she’ll never pay off.
He sees me as a person worthy of being friends with.
Or at least worthy of help.
And he’s under absolutely no obligation to feel that way.
Nor is he anywhere near the top of the men I know whom I would’ve expected to volunteer to help me.
I swipe at the streams leaking out of my eyes and falling on my boobs and dive for my luggage. I should’ve hung up tomorrow’s dress when we first got here, but I didn’t, because I didn’t want to open my bag and show off all my underwear and Slimzies in front of him.
I yank out my usual overnight T-shirt, remember it has a giant Thrusters logo on it, and silently debate with myself if Tyler will think that me wearing his team’s gear is an indication that I’d be more interested in telling people I had sex with a hockey player than it was that I was into him as a person, or if I’m seriously overthinking this because I’ve been a Thrusters fan basically since birth, since I was born cousins with Kami, whose parents have been Thrusters fans forever too, and Tyler has nothing to do with it.
Then I re-think everything I’ve been thinking and understand why he asked if I have gills.
Fish have gills.
He knows I’ve been pulling a few shifts at Cod Pieces.
Was he making a joke and I took it way too personally?
The bathroom door opens, and I slam my luggage shut lest my Slimzies make Tyler turn into a cringing puddle of man-wimp. Body-shaping underwear can do that sometimes.
Or so I hear.
And then I see him.
He’s in a skin-tight T-shirt—the fancy kind that athletes wear—and gray sweatpants and bare feet, his hair mussed, his blue eyes weary but still alert, those tattoos peeking out from under his sleeve and traveling down to his forearm, and if my mouth knew how to form words, it has now forgotten.
He tosses his bag into the small closet alcove, glances at me gaping at him, and stands there, holding my gaze, like he’s asking me a question that I should know the answer to, except I’m not sure I’m reading the question right.