Page 27 of For the Record

I sighed, considering it for a moment. Lying here for the rest of the day sounded nice, though. Getting up meant facing responsibilities and organizing.

“I can’t. I’m lying on all of my bras.”

“Nothing I haven’t seen before.” He reached a hand down to clasp mine. “Let’s go, honey.”

He used a fraction of his strength to pull me up to my feet. I was too lightheaded and focused on the word honey coming out of his mouth to bother fighting it. Adam’s hands held the backs of my arms, keeping me steady as I gently swayed to regain my balance.

I tried to ignore the flames in my body at the way he called me honey. Was he a pet name kind of guy when it came to his girlfriends? Or should I say wives? Well, wife. There was only one of me, I hoped.

He hadn’t had a girlfriend since we’d become friends, unless he kept that part of his life off limits for me. Wouldn’t be a total shocker. Sometimes we would be sitting there watching a movie and he’d casually mention that he went skydiving a year ago and didn’t tell anyone. Just to see if he could do it still. Either way, I always pictured him as more of a dark, mysterious, my wife kind of guy. Not a honey guy. It dripped off his tongue like warm vanilla sugar. Comforting like a soft, heated blanket that I wanted to lie in all day.

“Did you hear me?” he asked, shaking me out of my vision. A vision of him as one of those hunky heroes on the covers of Calla’s historical romance books. A guy with his shirt ripped and holding a fair maiden—a.k.a., me—with his hair blowing in the wind and his muscles rippling.

I cleared my throat. “Uh, yes. What was that?”

His eyebrows dipped. “What are you struggling with?”

I looked around the room at my fully packed duffel bag next to my fairy wings and a stack of vinyls. Wincing, I looked up at him. “All of it?”

“Explain.”

I sighed. “I have too much stuff. And I want to take it all with me.”

Adam shrugged, looking down at the excessive amount of clothing I’d piled on the bed. “I have an empty house you can fill up.”

“You don’t mean that,” I said, looking from my mess to his eyes, knowing his perfectly made-up house did not deserve my chaos.

He simply dipped his chin at me. “I do.”

“What about Christmas?” I asked, despite knowing it was only June. “I like big Christmas trees.”

“I’ll get you the biggest one.” He shrugged as if he didn’t just say the sexiest thing someone like me could hear.

I lifted my brow. “What if it’s too big for the house?”

“I’ll get a bigger house.”

Oh, good lord. I don’t know if my heart was going to survive this temporary marriage/roommate thing. Not when he kept talking like that.

“All right,” I lifted my shoulders and stuck out my chest. “But you asked for it.”

We were on number four, where he would hold a piece of clothing, and I would respond with yes or no. Most of them were yeses, and where I expected Adam to chime in and tell me I was excessive or that I had no need for all of this, he instead nodded and helped me fill up three bags’ worth of “essentials.”

Once I felt settled enough to head to his house, he stood and grabbed two of the bags, letting me pick up the smaller items until our hands were full.

“Feel better?” he asked in that deep baritone. I breathed in, glancing around my now less-cluttered room, and smiled. “Much.”

He nodded and turned to head to my living room. I began to follow but stopped when my eyes snagged on something. “Oh, wait!”

I walked a few steps, hearing Adam come up behind me, and attempted to kneel down to get my fairy wings.

A fair share of grunts came out of me as I leaned down to try and pick them up with my very full hands. Adam tapped my shoulder with one of the boxes in his hands.

“Okay, we have to draw a line somewhere.”

He was right, but I couldn’t just leave them here. “But they were custom made from a small Etsy shop.” And cost me way too much for a single occasion.

He rolled his eyes. “In what scenario do you need that at my house?”

---