Page 103 of Not Dating Material

“I could shower with you,” he says innocently.

“Well, that good-boy act lasted a minute.”

“Fine.” He huffs. “But can I sit in there and talk to you while you shower?”

“Seriously, what’s going on?”

“I missed you, is that okay?” he snaps.

Something tells me that isn’t it at all. There’s no saying no to him though. Ever. “Fine. Not like you haven’t seen me naked countless times anyway.”

“It’s true.”

“Come on, then.”

To his credit, he doesn’t creepily watch me or anything, just sits on the toilet lid, chatting away about work and his designs and how a cafe owner is being a dick about paying him half up front and threatening to complain about him on social media.

“Tell him to kick rocks,” I grunt. “You’re too busy to deal with that nit.”

“I know. But I don’t want him to hate me.”

“Hate you? Nuh-uh. This isn’t on you. You have boundaries. That’s a good thing. In fact, you could probably work on putting more of those into place.”

“Noted.”

I wash my face, hating the idea of someone trying to bully him into waiving his terms. “Want me to write back to the guy?”

“No. It’s okay. Despite what you might think, I don’t need protecting.”

And maybe that’s true. Molly’s made it through this long without me, but that doesn’t change the fact that I want to protect him. And … even though I’ll never, ever say the words out loud, maybe there’s even a small part of me that wants him to protect me right back.

Not physically. I’ve got that more than covered. But while Xander would quite literally murder someone for me, emotionally, we’re both a void of messed-up ideas and triggers. Our way of comfort isn’t the norm, and I know it isn’t healthy, but it’s never changing.

With Molly, he … cares. He’s gentle. And I don’t doubt that if I’m upset about something, he wouldn’t push me to talk about it; he’d just smother me with affection.

I’d hate it.

And love it.

Because if there’s one thing I’ve always known, it’s that affection is conditional. It doesn’t last. And having affection from Molly, only to have it taken away again, well … that actually might just kill me.

Chapter 28

MOLLY

Seven smells like his bodywash when I climb into bed beside him. I’d told myself not to ask to spend the night with him, to ignore the neediness and the insecurity Dad planted in my chest. Sure, I’ve made this mistake before, assumed a guy cared about me more than he did, but I know it’s not like that with Seven. His and Xander’s relationship might not be normal, but I can deal with weird. I can deal with blurred boundaries and sharing affection. As long as I know that sexually and romantically, Seven is mine, he can still give Xander everything he needs. Hell, maybe I can even help him with that.

The problem is that Seven isn’t mine.

“I’m not used to you being so thinky,” he rumbles.

“Long day.”

“Can’t have been that long if you spent half of it texting me.”

“I like telling you things.”

That gets me a half smile from him. “I like you telling me things.”

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