WHATEVER YOU SAY

MAC

I had no business starting anything with a man—no matter how perfect he was, how much I liked him, or how badly I wanted to.

This is what I get for allowing myself to have dinner with him. And then hang out with him. And then get to know him. I knew I was being reckless.

Appeal like Ward’s is a slippery slope, and I’ve just avalanched to the bottom.

My life was already… complicated—to put it lightly.

Or to flat-out lie because it was so much more than that.

Yet there I was, making it worse. Making it awkward. We were neighbors. Not to mention, I was pregnant, for fuck’s sake.

Shifting my ass back to his thigh, he suddenly asked, “Did you decide on colors?”

The abrupt conversation change threatened to give me whiplash. “What?”

“The paint strips in your house. Did you decide yet?”

It was such an innocuous question from a man who’d just had his finger inside me.

“Know you’re in your head again, baby. Know you’re tearing apart everything we just did. Know you wanna haul ass outta here and hide in your house. Not letting any of that fly. But I’m also not gonna push you. Rather than freaking you out by telling you that before I go to sleep tonight, I’m gonna stroke my dick while I smell your pussy on my finger, I’m treadin’ light with safer topics.”

I couldn’t help it.

I smiled. It was with wanton fire in my veins and rattled alarm twisting my chest, but I still smiled.

“But you did just tell me… that.”

“Semantics.” His arm banded around my midsection so I couldn’t run while he shook off his hoodie. Putting it on me, he prompted, “The paint?”

I sighed. “I have no idea what I’m doing.”

With the paint.

The house.

My life.

You.

“I don’t need to paint. I have a billion more important things to do, and it’s not even—”

I caught myself right as I almost said the house wasn’t mine. Then he would know I’d lied—even if by omission. Despite the pit of guilt that hollowed out my stomach, I still didn’t want to get into it.

Thinking fast, I finished, “That bad. It’s a million times better now that I cleared out the creepy bears from the bedroom.”

“In the bedroom?”

“At least a hundred. Tiny figures with beady eyes that followed me as I moved.” I gave an exaggerated shudder, and Ward let out a muffled grunt as his hard-on jerked.

Oops.

But also…

Not.

He asked me more about the potential colors, my sticky note ideas, and what else I was thinking.

As I answered, that restlessness returned. It was late. I was sated and drained. Even so, I could’ve gone inside and easily rearranged the living room.