Page 43 of Where We Belong

“All right. I’ll leave you the bed and take the couch.”

“No please,” I say. “Keep the bed.”

He smirks. “So you want to share?”

“Aaaaand the creep is back!”

With a chuckle, he says, “I’m kidding. But I’m not budging on the bed.”

“Me neither. I’ll be back late anyway. I’ll wake you if you’re in the living room.”

I know I’ve made a good point when he keeps a straight face and says, “You’re the worst, you know that?”

“Same goes to you, Finny.”

Chapter 15

Finn

“You’rereallysecretive.”

Lexie lifts her forehead from where it was anchored on her knee. “Huh?”

She’s currently in a position I call the “extra-splits.” On a yoga mat, her front foot is propped onto a foam block, which means she’s doing more than the regular splits. She came back a half hour ago from her practice session and has been stretching in my living room since, her round ass in full display in those tiny shorts. I’ve tried to busy myself in the apartment, I swear, but short of locking myself in my room and ignoring her, I can’t stop staring. It’s pathetic. So the only thing I found to do was distract myself by making her talk.

“You are,” I say from my spot at the kitchen table, an ignored newspaper app open in front of me. “It practically feels like my roomie is a complete stranger.”

“We’re not roomies,” she says as she switches sides in her splits, not even getting back up and down again, but simply twisting her torso so she faces the opposite leg and it’s her back one that’s propped up now.

Goddammit.Get a grip.

“Are we not sharing an apartment?” I say.

“Temporarily.”

She’s officially been living here for four days now. The day after her heater broke, my electrician contact did go see what was up, but he told me the problem wasn’t electric, it was with the heater itself, so I had to wait another day to get a heater repairman there. Then, that guy said the problem was a broken piece, and he’d need to order a new one, so it would be another couple of days at best.

Surprisingly, Lexie didn’t make a big deal out of it, not even when I made it clear that if she didn’t want the bed full time, then I wouldn’t agree to anything less than fifty-fifty. She grumbled a little—that wasn’t surprising—but when she looked back at the couch, which I bought on sale when I moved in here and know for a fact is pretty damn uncomfortable, she agreed. I then told her where the clean sheets were, thinking she’d want to switch them between us, but the only thing she said was, “Has there been someone other than you in them recently?” The meaning of the question was clear as day. I shook my head, not lying, and that was that. And I’ll be honest, it felt good that she didn’t doubt me.

I didn’t mind that she had to stay either. Having her crabby self here, even for a few moments every day, has given me a boost I didn’t know I needed. I’ve had a few guys who work on the farm ask me what was up my ass because I was singing to a Christmas carol while finalizing the outdoor arrangements of the self-serve part of the farm. I don’t know when it became a crime to sing out loud in public, but that’s beside the point.

Of course, the one downside is that I have to smell her shampoo on my pillow when I wake up, and I have to see her in clothes that make it pretty fucking hard not to get a constant boner, but other than that, everything’s sweet.

“We’re still roomies,” I say, propping my feet on the chair in front of me. “And it seems weird to not know anything about the person sleeping in the room next to mine. You could be an ax murderer for all I know.”

“And you think I would’ve told you if I was?”

“Maybe?”

She snickers before dipping her face once again onto her forward-facing knee. “You do know stuff about me,” she says, the sound muffled by her skin.

“Like what?”

“Like more than most people do.”

I can’t help but feel a glimmer of pride at that. I was serious—Idon’tknow that much about her—but if it’s more than most, it has to be a good thing.

“I still need more.”

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