Page 106 of Unexpected

“I wish we could stay here all day.”

“Why can’t we?” It seemed simple enough to me: I’d call into work for the day and ask Josh to watch Sadie if it meant we could spend time together and have even more mind-blowing sex.

“I actually have work to do today.”

I let out a disappointed groan and Hazel laughed.God, I loved her laugh. My heart clenched again at the feeling her laugh elicited. I didn’t think I’d ever get used to how she made me feel, especially how she made me feel when she was happy.

“Do we have to get up right this second?”

She chuckled before pulling my hand to her mouth and kissing the back of it. As her lips found my bruised knuckles from punching her ex-fiancé in the face the night before, she took the opportunity to roll out of the bed and scurry into the bathroom.

I shook my head and took off after her. One more round before we started our days couldn’t hurt.

The second round on the tiny bathroom counter then turned into a long shower, and by the time I was dressed and as prepared to leave as I could be, it was well past ten.

We lingered at the door for several minutes, sharing slow kisses and careful touches before I finally pulled away to let her get to work.

“Oh, before I go, we do a Friendsgiving every year, and it’s at our house this year. It’s this coming weekend actually.”

She nodded as she gave me a skeptical look.

“I want you to come,” I clarified.

Her face dropped. She opened her mouth but immediately snapped it shut before repeating the action. “Really? I don’t know if… I just think that…” Her voice trailed off, and her thumb slid between her lips as she chewed it in worry.

“Angel, why are you worried about it? My friends are going to love you.”Almost as much as I do.The thought made me backpedal for a moment, but only a moment, because I was done hiding from shit like that. Hazel had only ever given me reason to trust her and want to move forward, and that’s what we were going to do.

I was falling for her, no matter if it was too fast or not. I couldn’t change it.I had no power over it. It was a force greater than us both.

“It’s all the friends you always have over, right?”

I nodded until I realized her concern. “The past is in the past, Hazel. We’ll start over fresh, and none of them will hold anything that happened before over you.”

She gave me an incredulous look but withdrew her thumb from her lips as I gave her a reassuring squeeze.

“Okay.”

“Okay,” I repeated and kissed her quickly.

“Should I bring anything?”

“Just your sparkling personality.”

She rolled her eyes but laughed. “That’s a given. It’s actually a two-for-one deal: you get the personality and all of this.” She flourished her hands up and down her sides and winked.

“Thank God for that.”

THIRTY-NINE

Hazel

I wasgoingto shit my pants. Or maybe puke, but I was hoping it wouldn’t be both.

I had paced my apartment for an hour while I waited for the cobbler I’d baked to finish in the oven. Once I quadruple-checked that it was thoroughly cooked but not overcooked, I focused my attention on my outfit that I hadn’t even had the brainpower to think about before that moment.

The week had sped by. Work was picking up day by day, which left me less time to write. I found myself working and taking frequent breaks to jot down notes of dialogue and key issues in the story I hadn’t yet addressed.

My closet was just a smaller version of what my entire apartment, my entire life looked like. Shit was scattered everywhere and there wasn’t a rhyme or reason to any of it.

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