Page 45 of The Fake
“It sounds like he’s lucky to have you.”
I snort. “I doubt he feels that way.” I notice I’ve angled toward her without even realizing it. “What about you? Do you have siblings?”
“No, only child. I always wanted an older brother with hot friends.”
“If you were my little sister…” I stop and shake my head. “Not even going there.”
Her eyes light up, but she scrunches her face like she’s disgusted at the idea. “Ewww, I’d be your sister.”
“We could have a whole Cersei and Jamie Lannister thing going on.” I shrug. “No kids though, Joffrey was a monster.”
We laugh and then she yawns. My cue to let her get some sleep and also for me to stop thinking about sleeping with her before the lower half of me starts to get ideas again.
“’Night, Chloe.”
We’re facing one another. She’s got both hands pulled together by her face, and I’ve got one arm draped on the pillow behind her. Her eyes are locked on mine for three long seconds while I hold my breath and wait for her to make a play. I can’t be the asshole who makes her feel uncomfortable by making the first move, but I’m dying to kiss her again.
“’Night, Nathan,” she says finally and her lids close.
I don’t go to sleep. Never really planned to. Sleep and I aren’t friends anyway, so it’s really not an inconvenience. I’m lying on my back, counting blondes instead of sheep. Her breathing has slowed and evened out, so I get up quietly and head downstairs.
Everyone has gone to bed, so I’ve got the downstairs to myself. I put in my earbuds and crank up the music. My nighttime workout playlist is loud and angry, drowning out everything but the beat.
* * *
Chloe
When I wake up, it takes me a minute to remember where I am. The bed is cold and empty, but the room is still dark. A glance at my phone confirms it’s the middle of the night. I sit up and look around, but there’s no sign of Nathan. Not on the floor or at his desk. Weird as it sounds, I can feel he’s not here.
Once I’m out of bed, I find my shoes, slip them on, and then open the door just a crack. I’m like a runaway trying to sneak out in the middle of the night. The house is silent, so I tiptoe down the hall and stairs. I’m only a few steps from the front door—so close to getting out of here unseen.
I’ll send Sydney a text when I get home and tell her I left because I wasn’t feeling well. I’m not feeling great, so technically it’s true. I feel embarrassed and disappointed and confused—definitely not well.
Leaving in the middle of the night is maybe a little dramatic, but I don’t want to deal with the whole awkward next morning routine. Ironically, I think it might be more humiliating to wake up alone than it was naked and only remembering pieces of the night before.
I’m trying not to be offended that he found it so awful to sleep in the same bed as me that he actually got up and went to sleep somewhere else. Trying and failing.
I take one last glance over my shoulder to make sure I’m not seen and freeze. The living room is dark with only the light from the TV that’s out of view casting a soft glow in the room. Nathan has his back to me, raising and lowering a set of dumbbells, alternating curls with each arm. I’m frozen, trying to decide if I should tiptoe back upstairs or risk him hearing the door when I leave, that it takes me a moment to really take in the scene before me.
He’s shirtless and only wearing the gray sweatpants he put on for bed. He turns his head slightly and I hold my breath and press against the wall. He’s got earbuds in so I’m probably safe to sneak out, but I don’t do that. No, I walk toward the hot guy lifting weights at two o’clock in the morning.
When I get closer, I can seeNew Girlis on the TV. It’s silent, but the subtitles are on. My heart does a funny flutter thing in my chest when I realize he’s catching up on the episodes I watched without him.
I come around behind him at an angle, waiting for him to see me and hoping I don’t scare him into dropping a weight on his foot or something. I swear the man has been curling for a solid three minutes and doesn’t look like he’s even breaking a sweat… oh, nope, there’s the sweat. Sweet, delicious sweat.
I’m unabashedly giving his abs and chest a thrice over when I finally make it back to his face and catch his dark blue eyes on mine. His mouth is pulled into a smirk. He sets the weights on the floor in front of him and then takes out his earbuds.
“Hey, everything okay?”
“I feel like I should be asking you that.”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Me either.”
He drops onto the couch and wipes his forehead with his bicep. Eyeing my shoes and phone in hand, he asks, “Sneaking out?”
“I thought maybe I was keeping you from sleeping. Looks like I was right.”
