Page 33 of Finally Home

Hollie reaches down to grab her phone from her bag, but I grab her wrist, stopping her. “Or you could stay with me.”

Hollie freezes but then slowly sits back in her seat. “Stay with you?”

“Yeah, you know. You are my girlfriend, after all.”

I say a brief prayer that she says yes. As she thinks about my proposition, I watch her with my peripheral vision. Or I watch mainly the spot between her brows that shows off that she’s uncomfortable, but it never forms.

“Okay,” she whispers, and I fight back the urge to punch my fist in the airBreakfast Clubstyle.

Chapter 15

Hollie

Oliver pulls the jeep into the driveway of his home, or should I say, “our home,” for the next week. It feels so real seeing my car already in the driveway, like it’s totally normal to be parked there. I shake those thoughts from my head. All of this is still temporary.

“I see I’ve taught you well, young grasshopper,” Ollie smirks as he helps me out of the passenger side of the jeep. We hold hands while walking around to the trunk to retrieve our bags. I don’t put up a fight with Oliver over him carrying the bags, but I grab my camera bag. I hug the bag close to my chest. It’s quite ironic that it was so important to me to take this with me this weekend, yet I never once took my camera out of the bag. Maybe I only grabbed it in hopes this would be the one time my parents would support me. Crazy, I know. Did I really think that they would see that I brought my bag with me and ask me to take the pictures?But I also realize that I never once took out my camera on my time either. I didn’t have to hide behind the lens. Instead, Ollie kept me in the present with him.

As we walk up to the front door, I take my time to take in the house. The last time I was here, feeling much longer than two days ago, I was too busy focusing on not having a panic attack and leaving that I hadn’t really had a chance to. Now, I take in the one-story cottage-style home with gray siding and black shutters. Colorful flower beds line the front of the house, and I laugh to myself as I struggle to picture this man on his hands and knees working on such dainty flowers.

“Welcome home,” he says, ushering me inside before setting our bags down beside the navy couch. “I know it’s not much, but it’s home.” I smile as I watch him take in his own surroundings, pride and joy filling his eyes.

“No, it’s perfect.” Big houses full of everything one might ever need or never actually use don’t make you happy. The house I grew up in was cold, and I can already tell that this place is probably full of love.

He nods. “Do you need help getting the rest of your bags from your car?”

I shrug. “I can get them later.”

“Alright, well then, how about the ten-cent tour?”

I laugh. “Okay.”

I meant what I said. This home is perfect. We start our tour in the living room. Bookcases fill an entire wall, but I’m pretty sure they contain only movies, not books. I keep that in the back of my mind in my folder of things I know about this man—big movie buff or at least likes to collect them. The living room connects to a dining room with a tall square table with four chairs. There is a sliding glass door that leads out to the backyard. Down a hallway, there’s a bedroom, but instead of abed, it’s set up as a home gym, and a bathroom along with the master suite.

We’ve just walked back into Ollie’s bedroom from the adjoining bathroom when a thought occurs to me.Where am I going to sleep?Ollie follows my gaze to the bed and reads me like a book.

“You can take the bed, and I’ll sleep on the couch for the week. I’m usually pretty late coming home on nights I work, anyway.”

“What?” His statement throws me off guard. “I can’t take your bed. It’s yours. If you don’t want me sleeping in here—”

“No, it’s not that at all. I was trying to be a gentleman. We didn’t have any other options at the hotel, but here, we do. I just wanted to make sure you knew that.”

This is absurd.“We’ve shared a bed before and, for God’s sake, bodily fluids, for that matter. I think we can both be adults enough to share the same bed.” I pace back and forth, feeling flustered, when fingers wrap around my wrist and tug me into a hard chest. Before I’m given the chance to ask what’s going on, Ollie’s lips are on mine. Kissing Oliver Mosby is like warm cocoa on a wintry day, the first dip in the ocean, and like coming home. That last thought should have me jumping back and running for the hills. How can this man, who I’ve known for not even double-digit days, make me feel like this? Instead of letting that thought take over, I grip his shirt in my fists and cling to him.

He pulls back and tucks a stray piece of hair behind my ear. “I’m sorry. I didn’t just want to assume. Like I said, we didn’t have any other options before, but now we do. I don’t want you to think I have ulterior motives or am taking advantage of you. I just want you to be comfortable here. The thought of having you in my bed, pressed up against me like we woke up the past two mornings—” He pauses and makes a goofy face. “—okay, so more so like this morning than yesterday since we skipped the freak-out—has me hard as a rock.” He grips my hips and pullsme flush against his body. The outline of his dick is prominent in his jeans.

His lips hover over mine so that the slightest breeze would make them touch, but something holds him back.

“You know you should stop kissing me like that.” The words slip from my lips, even though I don’t mean a single word of it. In fact, I hope that this week, he doesn’t stop kissing me.

As if he could read my mind, Oliver pulls me into his lap on the edge of the bed with a gasp and takes full advantage, slipping his tongue into my mouth.

His phone rings in his pocket. I pull back from his lips, but he searches them out, kissing me again, before traveling down to my neck.

“You should probably get that,” I say in a breathy tone, grinding my hips against his.

Oliver stops kissing me and drops his head back as he grabs his phone and answers it just before it goes to voicemail.

“You better be dead or dying,” he barks into the phone before dropping his lips to my shoulder. I quickly squirm out of his hold while he frowns, listening to whoever is on the other end. He reaches for me, but I’m too quick for him to catch me. He flops back on the bed in a huff. That man is insane if he thinks I want whoever is on the other line to listen in on kisses, moans, and groans.

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