Then it hit me with lightbulb clarity. “You’ve been using your lavender stuff in my bathroom.”
“I use a bath oil.” Confusion filled every word and her gaze.
“You’ve been mind-fucking me with your bath oil bullshit.”
She jerked back. “No, I haven’t. Taking a bath is hardly mind-fucking someone.”
“The smell. When I walk in there, it’s all I can smell. It’s invaded my nasal cavity and my brain, rotting it from the inside out.” One mystery was solved. The smell hadn’t been me about to have a stroke from insomnia, but the complication made it that much worse. Was it Sabrina or was it the lavender? She’d been driving me out of my mind, but there was relief that a cause had been found. It could be the smell alone. I’d go out and buy a gallon of lavender oil if that’s what it took. But something told me it wouldn’t be that easy.
“I clean up every time, making sure I don’t leave anything behind. Making sure you’ll never even know I’ve been there.”
“I thought I was going insane.”
“So did I when all my treats were disappearing.” She jumped forward, jabbing an accusatory finger toward me.
“It’s not the same. Not even a little bit. Every night I’ve been drea—” I stopped myself from blurting out how pathetic my fixation had become.
She’d invaded my room and my mind. Her taste still lingered on my lips.
I needed to rein in my control and get a good night’s sleep. Once I solved that situation, maybe my brain wouldn’t be filled with a staticky fog that made it hard to focus on anything other than her whenever she was close. A panicked punch slammed into my chest. I couldn’t let anyone else get close. “My bathroom is off-limits.”
“How about a compromise?” She went big-eyed, softening like she was a second from melting into me.
I gripped the sides of my legs so I didn’t grab her again. “No compromise. Good night.” Running away wasn’t exactly what I’d call what I did—more like striding with purpose.
Changing into sweats, I could still taste her on my lips. Her sweet, soft lips and heavenly curves that were pressed against me.
No! I wasn’t exactly a prize. An insomniac who might be out of a job in a few months if I screwed up this New Year’s Eve concert. It was better this way, safer. If I could finally get some damn sleep, keep Sabrina at a distance, pull off the concert, then maybe there could be something more between us, but right now I was a fucking mess. No matter how much I wanted her, I couldn’t have her. Not yet.
I grabbed the book off my nightstand and flipped it open, trying to keep my mind off her, and closing it when I got to the pages I’d ripped out years ago. I’d awoken from the couch we’d put in the room beside my mom’s bed. Her hands were folded on top of the book pressed against her stomach. They were the pages I’d tried to read right after they took my mom away to the funeral home. The ones I hadn’t wanted to cry over, not when my tear ducts had felt like they were filled with sandpaper. The ones that had proven to me that even in fiction death wasn’t visited on the people who deserved it, but stole people from us when we needed them most.
Sitting on the edge of my bed, I stared at the open door to my dark bathroom. The tub was framed in the doorway. The only place I’d been able to sleep without nightmares. The place that smelled like her.
I flipped on my stereo, not cranking the music as loud as I normally would. Dragging my pillow and blanket off the bed, I walked toward the bathroom. Maybe tomorrow I could buy some lavender candles or an air freshener and see if it did the trick. In the meantime I needed to keep my distance from Sabrina. I was an unholy mess right now, and I didn’t think she’d enjoy sleeping in the tub with me so I didn’t wake up in sweating, flailing chaos.
14
Sabrina
I paced in front of my desk beside the glow of my phone, squeezed the last of the water out of my hair, and tossed the towel into the hamper. Now that I didn’t need to stop by the gym a few blocks away for model specimens, I’d finally decided to work out in the gym in the apartment building. Maybe by the end of the year I could achieve my goal of running up a set of stairs without feeling like my lungs were going to collapse.
Working out to be a size 2 wasn’t in the cards for me, but I could sure as hell boost my stamina. And I’d kept my daydreams of getting all sweaty with Hunter to a minimum. They’d accompanied less than half of my workout. Okay, maybe 75 percent.
Finishing up the last submission to Harper Linens meant more time for designing. I’d been wandering around the city looking for inspiration and even taken some from the design details in the apartment. I had at least a hundred different designs to sort through and decide which I wanted to add to my portfolio.
“He kissed you!” Cat’s voice blared from my phone on my desk. My door was cracked.
Thank God, Hunter had left a couple hours ago, bypassing me in the kitchen and rushing straight out the front door like I might pounce on him at any minute.
I mean, the kiss had been fine. Maybe a little more than fine. Serviceable. Serviceable like a rabbit with new batteries, hot breaths fanning my face that I swore I could still feel.
Okay, I hadn’t been able to get the kiss out of my mind since the moment his lips had landed their blistering sear on mine. But now we were back to the avoidance game.
Not that we’d been making much progress before the kiss. One step forward and a giant leap back. This was just par for the course. Maybe his goal was to avoid me from now on. At least his music hadn’t been blasting last night.
I didn’t mind being avoided. The last thing I needed was to have to flee another apartment at a moment’s notice because of another set of guy problems.
I grabbed the shipping labels off my printer and double-checked my list to ensure I hadn’t mixed up the packages. I’d finished up all my shooting, and unless I planned on making an apartment-wide blanket fort there wasn’t much I could do with them now. The extra cash would go to the sample-making I’d planned to do for my designs and would pay the grocery bill for the next month. “Shout it a little bit louder. I don’t think they heard you in Siberia.”
She inhaled and shouted at the top of her lungs. “Sabrina’s hot-as-fuck roommate kissed her.”
Even with the phone a few feet from me, I still shrank away from the earsplitting sound.
“Where are you?”
“In my office.”
The papers fell out of my hand. “You screamed that in your office?”
“The door’s closed. It’s no big deal.”
“You’re at a whole different level, Cat.” I shook my head, going back to sorting and labeling the sheets I needed to mail today.
“Trust me, I know. But you don’t manage to get all five of these jackholes out of as many scrapes as I have and not get a little leeway.”
“Like screaming ‘fuck’ in the middle of the workday in your office.”
“It’s the little things that make life worth living. Speaking of little things, did you cop a feel when he was ravishing you?”
I laughed and shook my head, trying to banish the fluttering swarm in my stomach, the electric tingle that ran across my skin whenever I thought about it and where I’d have liked things to go. Stupid celibacy.