Page 43 of Stuck with Me

“No, no, you did. Sorry. Guess I was dreaming.”

She glares at me, her eyes squinted so much they nearly close. “Ha,” she barks. “Nice try.”

I sit up and wipe the sleep from my eyes. Rosie holds her wrist against her chest as she stands. I want to ask her how her wrist is today. But I don’t.

She shoots me a glare over her shoulder before she saunters down the hallway. I groan into my hands and throw my head back against the sofa. I pick up my phone from the end table.

December 26th. I made it. I survived Christmas.

The battery symbol in the top right corner of my phone is red. I fell asleep before plugging it into the charger. I stand and adjust my tented pants. A faint light streams through a window in the kitchen. The sun hasn’t even woken up, meaning it’s early. Too fucking early for me to be awake too.

I shuffle down the hall to my room and plug my phone into the charger near the bed. The unanswered texts from my mother remain. I decide to leave her in suspense a little longer and toss my phone onto the bed and abandon it to charge.

After I use the bathroom, I find Rosie in the kitchen. The scent of coffee fills the small space. And I’ve never been more grateful for the caffeinated bean juice. My head throbs from the whiskey from the night before.

It must’ve done little to faze Rosie. Because when I take in the sight of her, she’s glowing in the dimly lit kitchen. My eyes dance up the back of her, paying extra attention to her bare calves and thighs. The long-sleeved button-down shirt she’s wearing barely covers her ass cheeks.

This woman is trying to kill me.

We’re quiet as we maneuver separately in the kitchen. I grab a protein bar I put in the cupboard yesterday while she pours coffee into one of the tin mugs from the center of the island. When she glances over at me, I skirt my attention away. She scoffs. Shit. Guilty.

After she finishes doctoring up her mug of coffee, she takes it into the living room. She curls up in the corner of the sofa with a blanket and gazes at the Christmas tree with its shimmering lights. I try to shake the trance of seeing her looking so fucking sexy this early in the morning and swipe the other mug off the island. I pick up the coffee pot and tilt it to fill my mug but only a few drops come out.

“What the hell?” I grunt, pressing my thumb and fingertip into my eyes.

She snorts. “Everything okay in there?” she calls from where she’s perched on the corner of the sofa.

I raise my brows and hold the coffee pot into the air, flapping the lid open and closed a few times. “You drank all the coffee?”

“Oops. Did I?” A sly smile spreads across her face and it my body heats.

And not in a good way.

This woman is cruel. You don’t mess with a man’s coffee.

“Fine. I’ll make more. Where is it?”

“I’ll tell you what, if you find it, you can make more.”

“Woman, I’m losing my patience with you,” I growl.

“Ooo that could be fun,” she teases.

We make eye contact from across the room and the sexual tension from yesterday has returned tenfold. Fire burns between us. Her sinister smile hovers over the brim of her mug while lust shimmers in her gaze. Our plan to do it once to get it out of our systems failed. If anything, I think I want her more.

But yesterday my judgement was clouded by the emotions over the holiday. Today, I don’t have that excuse.

I drag my focus off her and force myself to ignore her comment. If I don’t, I’ll be in trouble.

Continuing in my usual dickish behavior, I take to searching the kitchen cupboards noisily. I open one door and slam it closed. I swat at glasses, and they clink together. Pull random kitchen items out, I bang them on the counter.

Finally, I find the coffee in a cupboard with sugar, flour, and—thank God—coffee filters. I resist the urge from yelling,ah-hah!Something tells me I’ll still be the jackass because it took me far too long to find it than it probably should have. I don’t give a shit. All I care is that I can finally have a cup of coffee.

After I scoop in the grounds and fill the vat with water and hit the brew button, I decide I better answer my mother before she ends up paying me a visit here in Maple Ridge. Or worse, at the cabin. If that happens, Rosie can for sure say bye-bye cabin. My mother doesn’t negotiate.

I retrieve my phone from the bedroom and return to the kitchen to stand guard by the coffee maker. I don’t trust Rosie. Knowing her, she’d steal this cup too.

While Rosie’s phone plays out random sounds and songs from her scrolling through TikTok, I skim through my missed texts.

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