Confession: there’s this group on the internet that’s all about women—mostly moms—carrying in all of their groceries in one trip, and I sometimes spend hours scrolling through the pictures and stories, fascinated at how they can move while loaded down like that.
Seeing Tyler do the same with our luggage?
The man cannot get any hotter.
We step into the elevator, and I briefly wonder if I could zip Rufus into a suitcase—very temporarily—so that I could leap on Tyler and kiss him until I can’t breathe.
I want to have elevator sex with him.
I want to have elevator sex with him right now.
I’m getting up the nerve to hit the stop button when the doors open.
He hustles me out of the elevator, down a hall, around a corner, and stops in front of apartment 708.
While he digs his phone out and uses it to unlock the door, Rufus squirms.
Tyler shoots my cat a look, then swings the door open and gestures us inside.
We almost get tangled in the middle of the bags he’s carrying, and I am definitely caught up in the subtle scent of hotel soap that I didn’t notice on him as much in the car as I do now.
He follows us inside and lets the door swing shut. When it seals with a bang, Rufus leaps out of my arms, lands crooked next to the door in a houseplant that resembles a small tree, then plops into the dirt in the elegantly simple pot.
Tyler eyeballs the cat, then glances at a large aquarium full of brightly-colored fish. He briefly squeezes his eyes shut before grunting something that I interpret to mean follow me.
I don’t pretend I’m not gawking at everything as I trail him through the apartment. The living room is done in tans and browns, and I’m almost positive the floor is bamboo. In addition to the fish tank, Tyler has a wall of family photos, and there’s a gas fireplace beneath a massive television, with a lone stuffed Thrusty the Bratwurst mascot sitting on the mantle.
His furniture is understated and positioned around red Turkish rugs.
He has bookshelves. And books. And candles.
We pass the kitchen, which is shiny and clean except for a bamboo bowl of oranges, a stand mixer, and a crock of cooking utensils and salt and pepper shakers next to the stove, which has a teapot on the back left burner.
Then it’s down a short hallway past a bathroom and into a large, airy bedroom.
Tyler marches into the attached bathroom, which is way fancier than the attached bathroom of a guest room should be. There’s a double sink. A soaking tub. A separate shower. A little alcove for the toilet. And another door leading to a closet that’s clearly already in use with his own clothes.
Either the man has a ton of clothing, or he’s moving me into his own bedroom.
Does this apartment have a guest bedroom?
I hope so.
I want to know Tyler wants me.
There’s a reading lamp on the nightstand, and a book with a bookmark sticking out of it. Plugs for phones. A very cozy-looking maroon chair by the window with a throw blanket haphazardly tossed over the back.
Scattered coins and a picture of his parents on the dresser, plus a sticky note on the mirror that’s curling up at the bottom, like it’s been there forever.
Tyler is my favorite sibling, it says.
Clearly, there’s a story.
Also clearly?
This is his bedroom.
I eyeball the bed.
It’s neatly made with a quilt that looks like it could’ve been made by someone’s grandma, but probably wasn’t. More likely, one of his sisters got it for him.
He strides back out of the bathroom, stops, and we stare at each other until it gets awkward.
That doesn’t actually take all that long.
Maybe three seconds.
“Don’t put up with anyone who treats you like shit,” he says gruffly. Then he pats his back pocket—wallet check, I’m sure—followed by his front pocket—phone check, definitely. “I have to go. Make yourself at home. Eat whatever. The doorman’s bringing up a litter box. Tell him what kind of food you feed Rufus. He’ll get that too.”
I nod like being left alone in his apartment after everything we’ve been through in the past twenty-four hours isn’t awkward and weird.
And then it hits me. “My car,” I blurt.
I have two appointments tonight, plus I need to drop off Brianna’s Muff Matchers welcome kit that I forgot to give her last week, which is thankfully in my trunk, because if it wasn’t hidden inside the box labeled “jumper cables,” my mom would…
Let’s just say she’d borrow things and leave it at that.
Tyler hands me his keys. “Use mine.”
Use mine.
Holy crap.
I think we’re in a relationship.
24
Tyler
I retreat from my apartment as fast as I came, stopping on my way out of the building to ask the doorman for the favors I already promised Muffy.
Did I just accidentally make her my girlfriend?
I know she’ll figure out fast that I have two spare bedrooms, and I could’ve put her in either. I gave her the keys to my car. I sent her an authorization to unlock my door with her phone.
I didn’t just make her my accidental girlfriend.
I made her my accidental live-in girlfriend.
The six-block walk from my place to Mink Arena goes too fast, and it’s still over an hour until the team meeting starts.
I could hit the ice. Work out some frustrations.
Head up to see the front office staff. Ares’s wife works in marketing, and there’s a solid possibility he’d be in her office. They might have some good advice.
But what do I ask?
Does Muffy think we’re dating?
Nope. Not gonna ask that. Ares’s wife is friends with Kami, and therefore friends with Muffy. They’ll talk.
For all I know, they already are.
Which means my follow-up question—how do I know if my dick is working again, or if it was a fluke?—isn’t something I’m talking to Ares and his wife about either.
Not gonna lie. The old man in my pants is tired after all that bonering on the way home.
Dammit.
I need the bunnies.
I’m texting them as I walk down the hall, asking Athena and Cassadee all the questions that I don’t want to ask my teammates, when I hear my nickname.
“Jaegs!”
“Jaeggy, man, you’re back.”
“So you survived the funeral. Good. How’s your head? Coach is gonna kill you.”
Rooster, Klein, and Lavoie converge on me, since I was the dope who walked to the players’ entrance at Mink Arena instead of going in the front door to avoid my teammates.
I scowl at all of them.
Rooster grins under his cowboy hat. “Don’t get mad, now. We got your back. Ain’t gonna ask why you needed sniffing salts. But we wouldn’t be friends if we didn’t make sure you’re okay.”
“I’m asking,” Lavoie says.
“And then I’m asking how things went with Muffy.” Klein wiggles his brows.
I almost throw a punch.
But for what?
“I kidnapped Muffy and made her move into my apartment when we got back, and now I don’t know if she’s staying, or if we’re dating, or if she’s gonna take my car and drive to Kansas or Vermont or somewhere that’s basically anywhere but here and never talk to me again.”