Fucking waves.
“No,” he muttered, taking in the soft scent of her. Her laundry detergent, her shampoo, all soft and flowery. Like her. He pulled her a little closer. “I want to try just being still for a little bit. I’m fucking exhausted.”
“It was a long day, you worked through so much.”
He could let her think that’s all it was, or he could try out being honest for a change. “I wasn’t talking about today. Just in general. I’m fed up with living in a constant stage of fight. Waking up in the morning, ready to punch the sun for daring to rise. I get mad at the birds when they chirp too loud. The fucking bin men when they come around at seven on a Friday morning. I get mad when I have to wait five minutes for the next tram. I get mad at the band for everything, especially Matt. This, right now. Lying here. Holding you. Listening to the fire. I’m not mad.”
She slid her hand into his and he closed his fingers around hers. Still holding her hand, he wrapped his arms around her.
“Hey, Jase?”
“Yeah?” he mumbled into her sweater.
“What you just said would make a good song.”
He smiled, softly. “Yeah. It probably would.”
And he was thinking about how it would work when he drifted off to sleep.
When the sun rose brightly enough to rouse him from sleep, he realised it might be the first day he wasn’t pissed by its appearance. Cerys had turned in the night, as had he. Now he was flat on his back with Cerys’s arm and thigh draped over him. One hand gripped her arse, the other held her hand to his chest. The last time he’d woken with a woman in his arms, it had been Izabel. He hadn’t spent a full night with a woman since. Better to leave and be remembered for who you were, then wake with someone who had forgotten.
The thought of it ached. The peace of yesterday was gone. Back were thoughts about Iz, but they were interlaced with thoughts of Cerys. The way her blue eyes lit up when she was excited. How expressive she became when she told a story. Even her motivational quotes and meditation and abundance of metaphors and analogies. He squeezed her hand gently.
Were his developing feelings for Cerys just a reaction to thoughts about Iz?
They’re not.
The voice struck him as loudly as if he’d yelled it over the vast lake outside.
No, they weren’t.
Cerys was her own person. Too nice for her own good. Sarcastic when she needed to be. It was impossible to compare the two.
He sighed and pulled Cerys closer.
With the contact, Cerys’s head shot up off his chest, followed by a flail of arms tossing off the blanket as she rolled from the sofa and landed on the floor with a thud.
“What the fuck, Cerys?” Jase said, laughing as he leaned over the edge of the sofa. “Are you okay?”
Cerys pushed her curls from her face with both hands. “Shit,” she cursed. “I had no idea where I was or why someone had their hand on my arse.”
She looked so fucking cute. “That’s not normally the effect I have on most women. Usually, they want to stay in my bed.”
Cerys curled her lip in his direction with a growl. “As I am not most women, I find waking up with strange men unnerving.”
He offered her his hand, and she took it. But instead of helping her stand, he tugged her back down on the sofa and bundled her in the blanket and his arms before she could protest. “I’m a strange man now, am I?”
She tried to force her way out of his hold for a moment and then huffed out a breath. “You know what I mean. Do you know what time it is?”
“No idea. But you’re my lucky sleep charm. I can’t remember the last time I slept that well.”
Cerys pinned him with narrowed eyes. “Well, don’t get used to it. That was an accidental occurrence. Back home to our own beds tonight.”
Jase laughed. “I don’t think so. I feel like if the studio offers the full service it says it does, and if you want to make sure your artists are properly relaxed before they record, you should want to sleep with me.”
“I feel we’d have different definitions of what sleeping with you means.”
“Hey, I kept my hands to myself all night. You were the one crawling over me like you couldn’t get enough of my abs that you seem so intent on strengthening.”
“It’s not your ab muscles, it’s training your diaphragm strength by . . . you know what, never mind. And I did not crawl all over you.”
“I was just lying here minding my own business. You were the one whose knee was precariously up in my junk.”
“Urgh. I need coffee before I continue this conversation. I think I preferred tired, sullen you. Less words to deal with.”
Jase laughed. “By your hand placement this morning, I disagree.”
Cerys fought her way out of the blanket burrito he’d wrapped her in and stood up. “I’m making coffee and toast and then I’m getting in the . . . holy shit.”
Jase leaned up and looked where she was looking. The drift of snow up against the door looked to be at least a couple of feet tall. “Erm, can we get out through all that?”
“Not without a lot of work. I mean, since I’ve been in Detroit, I’ve seen that they’re great at managing snow in the city. But up here? I don’t know. And I’m pretty sure they won’t clear the driveway we drove down to pull the car up next to the house. Guess we should eat and go deal with that.”
Jase climbed to his feet and followed her to the kitchen. She didn’t seem to notice her messy hair or the left legging hitched up around her calf. There was a naturalness to her, an effortlessness. She busied herself making coffee, as he popped bread into the toaster. “If we can’t drive back, can we work on another song today? I’m thinking that seeing I’m a bit shit at explaining myself to the band, it might be useful to have a couple of songs to play them to . . . I don’t know . . . help them understand what I’m trying to say.”
“I think it’s a great idea. First, we should see if we can get the car out and get home before some more snow falls. We can always go into the studio later on to do it today. If not, we can do it here.”
Once they’d eaten, they bundled up as best they could.
“Out you go, sunshine. One giant leap for mankind, and all that.”
Cerys bit back a laugh. “Is that another dig at my boots?”
Jase laughed. “Course not.” Plus, he actually lamented his decision to wear his trainers on Friday, which were as much use as a chocolate fireguard in the snow.
She shook her head. “I’ll go out first with one of the snow shovels and clear a path for you to follow behind me. You can make the path wider.”
There was something quite monotonous yet therapeutic about scooping the snow and watching it curl into the shovel before he hurled it onto the side of the driveway. When they got to the road, the found it to be just as dense as the drive.
Cerys leaned on the snow shovel. “We should widen the path on the way back so it’s wider than the car.”
Jase looked up at the sky. “But what if it snows again?”
“It will all need shovelling whether it falls now or later. Might as well get the driveway clear now so it won’t take as long later.”
An hour later, the task was done. As Jase put the shovel away, he remembered what he’d said to her inside about being a kid, scooping snow off cars in Manchester. He grabbed a mittful from the car roof, squeezed it between his palms, and then threw it at Cerys.