Creeping in, I gently place the bag on the small table and look at the bed. No Wes.
My fists curl into tight balls of anger. How could he ghost me again? How could—
The faucet in the bathroom turns on. A breath I didn’t know I was holding rushes out of me. Wes steps from the bathroom. His hair glistens as if he’s just run wet hands through it. He wears only jeans and his smile is an unlikely combination of sexy and bashful. I can’t even begin to discuss the abs that go on for days and days. I will not think about dragging my lips across the plateaus of muscle, or sliding my tongue through the valleys.
When I drag my lust-filled gaze up his body to finally look him in the eyes, I find he’s wearing a smug smirk.
I’m on the verge of telling him to stow that obnoxious grin, but my growling stomach intervenes. “I brought breakfast,” I say, nodding my head at the bag on the table.
Wes nods. “I’m starving.” He removes everything from the bag and spreads it out on the table.
I sit down across from him and swipe the burrito that isn’t labeled ‘spicy’. “I thought you ghosted me again.”
“I know,” he responds, unwrapping the foil from the remaining burrito. “Your face shows your thoughts.”
“I wish you suffered from the same affliction,” I gripe, taking a bite. “You can be difficult to read. And when I say difficult, I mean impenetrable.”
Wes sits back. He is stoic, not saying a word, and proving my point about being difficult. He removes the lid from the coffee and pauses for a fraction of a second to smell the black liquid before taking a sip.
Either he’s particular about his coffee or he takes pleasure in the moment before the first sip, the one where the steam curls over your nose and the scent informs your brain of what’s coming a millisecond before your taste buds do the job. It’s definitely not the former, because that’s not Wes’s style. Which means I’ve just discovered something insanely cute about him, and it makes me want to get out my shovel and pickaxe and start mining for more quirky gems.
I wait until his mouth is loaded up with a huge bite, then ask him what his nightmare was about. I do this on purpose to give him an excuse to not answer right away. I thought it was the considerate thing to do. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have said a damn word about the nightmare. Silent, brooding Wes from last night at the concert is back, only he took steroids during the absence and now he’s adding twitching jaw muscles to his foul mood.
“You don’t have to tell me anything, obviously. But seeing as how I was the person you woke up—”
His eyes fly to me. “I woke you up?” It’s a question, but it doesn’t come out like one. It sounds more like a horrified realization.
“Yes.” I’ll leave out the part where he kicked and hit me. It wasn’t like it was that hard. More like half-hearted blows from a person who has just been sedated but isn’t fully under yet.
He palms his forehead, leaning the weight of his head into his hand.
“Wes,” I reach out and brush my fingers over his arm. “Everything is okay.”
He gives me a derisive look, and it cuts me to the quick. “Everything is not okay, Dakota. You heard me having a nightmare.”
“So? People have nightmares all the time, Wes.”
He laughs once, the sound scornful. “Not the same as the ones I have.”
“What was yours about?” My voice is soft and calm, coaxing. Maybe if he talks about it, he’ll feel better.
He shakes his head. “There is no way I’d ever tell you.”
“Understandable.” I ball up the tinfoil from my burrito and toss it in the empty paper bag. “But maybe you should talk to somebody.”
Wes looks at the ceiling, his chest puffing up with a deep breath, and he slowly lets it go. “I’ll pass.”
I stand. I don’t know what my plans are for today but I’m not going to sit here and beg Wes to get help he doesn’t want. I’d have better luck showing my vacation pictures to a brick wall.
“I need to get ready for the day.” I reach for my jeans and remind myself how badly I need to do laundry. I looked online yesterday and found a laundromat nearby. As much as it’s going to suck, I’m going to have to spend a few hours there.
Wes stuffs the trash from our breakfast into the wastebasket. He looks down at the remaining food, pointing in disgust at the avocado toast.
“What is that?”
I’m so relieved that he seems to be taking a step toward an improved mood that I choose not to tease him for being the last millennial on the planet who doesn’t know about avocado toast. When I tell him what it is, he informs me avocados belong in guacamole.
I give him a look that conveys just how hopeless I believe him to be. “Now that that’s been cleared up…” I pull out a shirt and start for the bathroom. “I’m going to take a shower.”
Wes grabs his perfectly folded shirt from its spot on top of his boots. I avert my gaze as he pulls it over his head because I refuse to be caught checking him out. Again.
“I’m late, and I’m going to get shit for it. I told my dad I’d move the herd today.” Wes pulls his phone from his back pocket and looks at it. “Warner called. Twice.”
I pause in the open bathroom door, my hand resting on the doorframe. “That’s good though, right? Not the part where you’re late, but the inference that you’re late because you slept over? Kinda ratchets up the rapid falling in love rigamarole.”
He smirks. “Rigamarole?”
“It’s a word.”
“I know. But I’ve never heard anyone use it besides my elderly grandfather.”
“Well, now you have.”
“The first time we met, you told me I was sitting all by my lonesome.”
My head tips to the side. “I don’t recall.” Lies. I remember it like it happened twenty seconds ago. I’d never felt more alive in my whole life than the moment I approached Wes.
He stares me down. I can’t tell if he knows I’m lying because his face goes stoic again. “Right,” he says tightly. He pulls on his boots and heads for the door, pausing after he turns the handle. “What are we doing tonight?”
“Laundry.”
“Okay.”
I blink in surprise. I thought for sure he’d object to that. “I’m just kidding. I’ll do laundry tomorrow. As for tonight, there’s a place I’d like to take you, but I can’t tell you where.”
He turns around, regarding me with that cool look of his. “You can’t tell me?”
I shake my head, and he huffs out a short laugh. He looks at me for a long moment, thinking about it, then says, “I’m in.”
“Yes.” My fist pump amuses him and he actually laughs. “Can you meet me out front of the hotel at five?”
He nods. “I’ll be there.”
It’s awkward, him standing at the door looking at me. It almost feels like we should say goodbye with a hug or a kiss. Something a little more intimate than see ya later, pal.
But we don’t.
He waves at me, a single stiff swipe through the air. I wave back, then step in the shower, reminding myself why I agreed to this plan in the first place.