Page 42 of Double Trouble

Not sure. I settle on that answer and send it off.

Bubbles pop up immediately, and I rock back and forth in my seat, waiting for the next question he’s about to lay on me.

But it doesn’t come. After a while, the bubbles disappear, and I shrug and get back to editing. Hopefully the guy fell asleep now that he knows his sister’s safe.

A brush of fur runs across my nose, and I twitch, the urge to sneeze rousing me from a deep sleep.

I wave my hand around lazily, batting away a fuzzy tail. Hawk barely gives me a glance before settling down on my chest, tucking his little legs under his body and deflating with a purr.

As cute as it is to wake up to this furball, I was kinda hoping to wake up to a pair of green eyes and not a cat butt.

I swivel my head, brows pulling together at the softness. Was there a pillow here when we fell asleep?

Sometap tap tappingreaches my half asleep ears, and I reach up and stretch sky high. Hawk whips his head around, the evilest of looks in his eyes before he uses me as a launching pad, plopping onto the carpet. He stretches long before snootily making his way across the room. He stops at Tanner’s desk chair before jumping into his lap.

Tanner continues to tap on the computer, headphones covering his ears. Hawk settles in, and never thought it’d happen, but I’m jealous of a cat.

I point my toes, the muscles in my legs aching from probably a mix of boarding and sitting in a car all day yesterday. I wrinkle my nose as the dull pangs shoot up and down my calves. Oy, I’m going to need a major stretch before my run tonight.

Tanner stops typing and settles his right hand on his mouse and his left on his cat. A grin tugs the corner of my lip, and I turn to my side just to watch him for a bit. The early morning sun streaks through a couple of broken blinds—probably due to that cat—and lights up his right leg. He’s still in the clothes he wore yesterday, the ones we fell asleep in. Shorts and a black t-shirt. My eyes drift to his laundry basket. He’s gotta own other colors. I’ve only seen him in black—oncein blue at Candace and Pete’s engagement party—but I’d love to see him in green. The way it’d make his eyes pop… Gah, I’d melt at the knees.

I test all my muscles before pushing the comforter—oh, that’s new too—off my lap and padding my way to Tanner. He’s gotta be deep in work mode. Not even a flinch at any of my movements.

Files and programs light up the screen, and he’s toggling back and forth from all of them at such speed I have no idea how he’s keeping up with it. Warmth tugs at my heart when I see a snippet of myself dropping into the half-pipe at Troublemakers. He watches it for about three seconds before he hits pause and drags another clip in and then adjusts volume levels. He tilts his head back and forth, watching the same clip over and over until he shakes his head and drags the clip he just pasted in to the trash bin.

Pressing my lips together to keep from grinning so wide that I hurt myself, I slide my arms across his shoulders and hug him tightly from behind. He jolts at the sudden contact, and I soothe him with a light kiss to his neck.

“Morning, boyfriend.” Oh, what calling him that does to me. Like I somehow have some claim on him, which is completely barbaric, but I don’t care. He’s mine, and I love that he’s mine.

He slides one side of his headphones off his ear and offers me a tired smile. Red rims his eyes, dark circles forming underneath. “Hey. How’d you sleep?”

Concern pulls at my brow, and I ignore his question. “Have you been upallnight?”

“Maybe…” A shy smirk pulls at his lips. He gestures at his screen. “But I’m about done with it.”

“You didn’t have to stay up all night to do that.”

He lifts a shoulder and leans forward, letting my arms slide from around him. He unplugs his headphones and settles them around his neck. He toggles the mouse to the volume adjustment. “You wanna see it so far?”

“Hell yes.” I step to his side, one hand on the back of his chair and the other on my hip. “Can I sit there, Hawk?”

Tanner silently chuckles, and that laughter quickly turns into a yawn. “Come on, buddy,” he says, gently nudging the guy off his lap. The cat gives me that death glare again, and I stick my tongue out at it. I know he’s known Tanner longer, and he’s a freaking cat, but I will fight for Tanner’s attention.

Feeling silly and victorious, I plop onto Tanner’s lap with a little too much gusto. He lets out anoof!and the hydraulics on the chair wheeze with the added weight.

I hold my breath and scan Tanner for injury. “Whoops.”

He lets out a tired, breathy laugh and adjusts me, sliding me closer to his chest. I cross my legs at the ankle and put my arm around his shoulder. For a guy who was up all night, he still smells fantastic.

“It’s not one hundred percent done,” he warns, and I shush him with a finger to his soft lips—lips I haven’t kissed yet this morning, but that will be rectified.

His eyes meet mine, amusement playing at the edges even though he is so exhausted. Poor guy needs to sleep.

He pulls the video up to full screen and presses play. There’s a tiny intro of me doing a grind and landing in front of the camera. “I’m Maddie “Mad” Owens from Indiana, and I’m here to shred it in this year’s Ultimate Boarding Competition.”

I cringe at how awkward I sound. I glance at Tanner to see if he thinks we should just cut that out and have text or something that introduces me, but he’s grinning, so maybe it’s not as bad as I think.

He used a cool ripped effect to transition to the next clip, and the music starts, the beats fitting so perfectly it’s almost as if I was actually skating to it when filming. He married clips together from my GoPro, his phone, his fancy camera, and the entire thing looks so professional I feel like I already have a sponsor, and this is the ad for their products that run before YouTube videos or on a scroll through TikTok.

---