Page 31 of The Fantasy League
Hereallyneeded to stop pulling me into a bridal cradle before I gave myself any ideas.
I blamed it on the suit. Not the man wearing it.
He slammed the door shut with his foot and I tightened my grip on his neck while he carried me across the backyard and through the pool house until he placed me ever so gently on top of my bed.
Like he’d been here a thousand times before, Abel walked over to my closet and riffled through the hangers before pulling off a sleep shirt and picking out a pair of shorts from the dresser drawer. “These good?” he asked, holding them up in his hands.
I nodded.
“Up,” he demanded, placing the sleepwear in front of me and grabbing my arms to lift me upright. “May I?” he asked as he positioned himself behind my back and swept my hair over my shoulder so it wouldn’t get caught in the zipper.
I nodded, holding the front of my dress in place so as not to flash him.
What a story that would’ve been.
Abel’s fingers lingered for a moment, leisurely grazing the exposed skin on my back. A shiver shot down my spine at his touch.
My heart pounded recklessly inside my chest while every nerve ending in my body stirred and danced.
I cleared my throat, and Abel jerked his hand away. A beat passed, and relief flooded over me when I finally heard the undoing of the zipper.
Abel stopped the zipper when he reached my hips and stepped away abruptly into my en suite bathroom. “Change. I’ll be right back,” he called from the other room, though the faintest scent of his sandalwood cologne lingered around me, making it feel like he was still here.
I quickly slipped off my dress and threw on the T-shirt that Abel had picked out for me. A few moments after slipping on my shorts, he walked back into my bedroom with a package of makeup wipes, mouthwash tablets, and a hair tie in his hands.
He placed the toiletries on the nightstand and peered down at me with an earnest look in his eyes. “I want us to be friends… if you’re up for it.” He spoke as if he was uncertain about the words passing from his lips.
Abel wanted to be my friend?
Earlier in the car, when he hadn’t responded to my confession about not knowing how to act whenever we weren’t pretending, I’d assumed he didn’t want to be friends with me.
Well, he hadn’t exactly saidanything, so I had no reason to believe otherwise until now.
I would’ve understood if he wanted to keep our relationship strictly professional, but deep down, I wanted him to be friendly with me.
If I was honest with myself, I think that’s what I’d wanted from the beginning.
So, whenever he treated me like I didn’t exist or threw out the meals I’d worked so hard to make for him, it hurt.
A lot.
And I might’ve taken it more personally than I should have. But now he was offering us a chance to start fresh.
Friends.
I could do that.
“I’d like that.” I smiled up at him.
But to my surprise, he didn’t smile back. Instead he just locked his eyes on me intently for a long while until his breaths grew shallow and uneven.
I couldn’t help but feel like there was more that he’d wanted to say, but much like earlier, no words passed his lips.
“Would you mind grabbing me some water from the kitchen? The cups are in the cabinet above the dishwasher,” I asked, trying to break the tension.
Abel nodded curtly and made a left out of the room toward the kitchen.
Okay, somaybemy eyes lingered on his perfectly toned butt as he walked away, but I didn’t get to enjoy it because the second I was alone I let out a giant breath that had been trapped in my lungs since the moment we pulled in the driveway.
