He looked at me now, his eyes so piercing. “I get your denial. I get that you didn’t want to lose Damian. I get all of it. The difference between my situation and yours? I had help. I had people in my corner ready to support me, but if they hadn’t been there, I don’t know where I would be. And yeah, I get you wanting to put a wall up, but it ain’t happening.”

He laid me down and loomed over me.

His hands traced my face. “Not on my watch. Not while I’m in your corner.”

He paused, his eyes growing tender. “Got it?”

He’d used a hammer. Each word he’d said was a strike, a dent, a chip away. With his last word, the wall fell.

I crumbled. “Got it.”

Then his mouth was on mine, and after we checked to make sure Grant and Sophia were sleeping (both snoring), he locked the door and turned my fan up even louder.

Once again he moved inside of me.

No condom. Just him. Me. Nothing between us.

I was fairly certain this felt like making love.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

We’d missed the friendship bus, Reese and I. The train. The subway. The entire freaking airport. We were so far off base from friends who fuck, or whatever we were supposed to be to keep out the emotional attachments that I didn’t know how we’d recover

I rolled over, knowing his alarm would go off in three minutes.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to recover.

His face was turned toward me. His long eyelashes resting against his cheek.

One arm was up under his pillow, and his other draped over my waist.

Maybe he felt my gaze, but his eyes opened. When I saw he was watching me, a slight twitch to his top lip, I spoke.

“Would you still like me if I wasn’t funny anymore? If I resorted to lame jokes I stole from a Laffy Taffy, would you look at me differently?”

I propped my head on my hand.

“Can I have your entire wardrobe?”

“Do you think Grant and Sophia boned last night?”

“Are we still friends?”

A pause, then, “Does dementia run in your family?”

His eyes shifted, growing more alert with each of my questions. He moved, his hand sliding around my shoulders at the same time his alarm went off. Reaching over me, he turned it off. Lying on his side, his head on the pillow next to mine, he smiled. It was slow and tender, but only one thing would make it the best smile I’d ever seen.

Reaching behind me, I opened the drawer on my nightstand and pulled out two pieces of gum. I offered him one. “To preserve the romance.”

He snorted, but popped it in. “There.” He breathed on me. “Better?”