Page 69 of Walking Red Flag

Moving forward with her eyes on me, she reached up and pulled my pencil from behind my ear.

I laughed.

She watched me laugh and said, “Are you sure about this, Cutter?”

I grinned. “I don’t do stuff that I don’t want to do, beautiful.”

Mentally, I’m just a corner on a fitted sheet that keeps popping off.

—Milena’s secret thoughts

MILENA

We didn’t get married at a courthouse.

We didn’t get married in Vegas.

We didn’t get married in a church.

In fact, we didn’t get married at all.

What we did do was move in together later that night.

Into my place.

Neither one of us asked where he would sleep.

He’d walked into my house with a duffle—one that was stuffed so full that I’d had to question whether the zipper could handle the strain he’d put it under—and tossed it into my closet.

He’d then walked directly into my bathroom and stripped for a shower.

Which led me to now, watching him strip out of his sawdust-covered clothes.

Being covered in sawdust was not conducive with closing the bathroom door, apparently.

“Do you, uh, want me to get the door for you?” I asked.

“You got a hamper or something?” he asked. “I should’ve probably done this outside. I’m gonna get the bathroom floor covered in sawdust.”

I bit my lip and said, “I’ll, uh, get the vacuum once you get in there. That way you’re not getting water all over the floor after you get out.”

“Thanks,” he turned to me as the shirt was carefully pulled off of his body.

Now, here was the moment where I might’ve lost a few brain cells.

See, I’d seen the whole “man takes shirt off from the back of the collar thing” before.

My brothers weren’t shy with being half-naked in front of me.

They both took their shirts off like that.

Previous boyfriends, as well as my latest, had always taken the shirt off from the bottom, lifting the shirt up and over their head as they turned the shirt inside out.

But Cutter?

He carefully lifted the shirt from the back of his neck, hunched his shoulders, and pulled it free from his body.

All the while, in slow motion, making my mouth all but water.

---