Page 94 of Missed Sunrise
Bree took a huge sip of her drink. “Let’s watchSabrina,” she decided and smiled at the man on the floor in front of me. “Cody has a thing for Harvey.”
They shared one of their pointed looks, the tether between them so layered and substantial that I almost thought I could reach out and touch it. But then Cody put his items on the floor in front of him and gestured to the screen. “Who doesn’t?” he drawled as he scooched backward and leaned his weight against my leg. “He’s hot.”
It wasn’t butterflies in my stomach, exactly, but more like a flock of birds taking sudden, desperate flight from my belly button to my chest, and I had to remind myself to breathe so that I didn’t miss a second or feeling of this moment.
I focused on the backs of Cody’s small black stud earrings until Vinh started an episode ofSabrina the Teenage Witch,and I dragged my gaze to the laptop.
Bree looked over her shoulder at us with a huge smile, and I smiled back, soaking in the feel of Cody’s reassuring warmth against my leg.
“Best day ever,” Bree sighed as she set down her frappe and rested her chin on top of her crossed arms, immediately getting lost in the show.
Cody leaned his head back on my thigh and looked at me upside down, somehow impossibly beautiful even from such an angle. “Let me know when you want some of your drink.”
“I will,” I replied, just as softly.
We stayed like that for several moments, and I reached out to touch him but then remembered my gloves and retreated, smiling at him sadly. “It would’ve been worth it, Dezi.”
His expression heated and then softened as his gaze moved from my eyes to my hand and finally to my mouth. “Here,” he said as he opened the container beside him without looking and produced a cookie from within it. “A treat.” He twisted toward me and lifted it to my mouth in offering.
The scent of brown sugar, vanilla, and a bit of coconut—not from the cookie—hit me as I bit into it without hesitation, my eyes fluttering shut at the familiar flavor. It was one of Vinh’s recipes and my favorite. They must have gone to the houseboat to make them, which was just… sublime. For so many reasons.
Cody watched me unabashedly as I finished the bite and took another he offered, his throat moving in a thick swallow as I licked some crumbs from my lips. He ate the rest of the cookie then, his gaze flicking to my mouth once more before he turned back around and took a shuddering breath as he focused on the show.
To my relief, he leaned back against me a moment later, and as my gaze catalogued every inch of the room, of this space and time, I couldn’t help but agree with Bree.
This was one of the best days, even after having spent most of it keeping myself busy with commissions and Ari’s, wondering what would happen next with the man beside me.
I couldn’t help my smile as I removed the towel covering Bree’s thigh and readjusted my light over her leg. Then I picked up my tattoo gun, but before I went back to work, there was the faintest touch at my ankle, and I glanced down to see Cody run his thumb over the side of my foot before encircling my ankle completely with his hand. I stared at it for a long moment before glancing curiously at his back, but he kept his focus on the laptop.
But then, as if he felt my gaze, he squeezed, and the absolute contentment of the moment settled inside me, and I found myself hoping that this night could last forever.
And if finishing the details of Bree’s tattoo took more than my estimated thirty minutes, and one TV episode became two and then five, with Cody dozing against my leg halfway through the third, then that was just my good fortune.
And if his hand never left my ankle, anchoring me to him in such a way that I internally begged for him to never let go….
Well.
There were no good words to describe that, but hope was close.
Ecstasy was closer.
25
Cody
I woketo warm pressure on my shoulder and the nostalgic strains of canned laughter.
My hand reflexively tightened around bare skin as I cracked open an eye, a sense of inherent safety and calm blanketing me. Vinh was crouched in front of me, backlit by the laptop that seemed to be the only light in the room now.
“What time is it?” I whispered, my voice deeper with sleep, at which he shrugged. Frowning, I supposed it didn’t matter, especially as the warmth pressed against my side and the vague memories of the night took center stage.
My hand flexed again, and my heart jump-started as the hazy memory of Liem joining me on the floor danced in my mind as I took in the firm, bare thigh I’d been gripping in my sleep.
Liem’s thigh.
I trailed my gaze up his body to where his shirt was ridden up just enough to show a sliver of hip, then to his right hand splayed open on the floor beside him, and finally to his face, peaceful in sleep.
An angel.
