Page 20 of Take Care, Taylor
“Thank you.” I smiled and stepped out, in utter awe that I was exactly where I wanted to be. For the first time in forever, life was going my way.
I took the elevator to the seventh floor and walked down the hall; the door to 7B was hanging wide open.
My jaw hit the floor at the sight of the panoramic windows in the living room, the all-white granite kitchen, and the hardwood floors that stretched from room to room.
Making my way down the hall to the bedrooms, a door on my left suddenly swung open—knocking me to the ground.
What the hell?
I jumped back up and found myself face-to-face with the last man on earth I wanted to see twice in one day.
Now out of his Bears jersey, his abs were covered by a white T-shirt that clung to his chest. His jeans had been exchanged for gray sweatpants.
For a split second, my brain short-circuited—registering his voice, his scent, the exact same tilt of his smirk from high school.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I hissed.
“Ilivehere,” he said. “At least while I’m in this program.”
“No.” I refused to buy into whatever trick my mind was playing on me. “You’re here for some type of bullshit photo op for the Bears or something…”
“I had no idea you’ve been keeping up with me since we last spoke.” His lips curved into a smirk. “I’m flattered.”
“Don’t be. Just get out before I call security.”
“What part of‘I live here’is difficult for you to understand?” He narrowed his eyes. “Shouldn’t be that difficult for an English major to understand words…”
I glanced down at his hand, noticing a wreath.
“It fell off our door,” he said. “I was fixing it before putting it back.”
As if I still couldn’t accept his words as reality, I squinted at the names jutting out from the frame.
No matter how hard my eyes strained, the truth was the same.
Taylor Wolff & Audrey Parker.
“Surely you can afford to stay somewhere else—anywhere else—with your ten-million-dollar contract.”
“It’s atwenty-million-dollar contract.”
“Thank you for making my point even clearer.” I crossed my arms. “You can afford to live somewhere else.”
“I’d rather stay on campus.”
“I’d rather you stay someplace else.”
“And I should care what the hell you think because?” He looked me up and down. “Instead of acting like a child, pretend to be an adult and get the hell over it.”
He stepped back and motioned for me to move past him, but I didn’t budge.
“I took the room on the right,” he said. “I figured you’d prefer the other one.”
I swallowed and walked down the hall, looking between the two rooms. Both were the size of apartments—decked out with floor-to-ceiling windows, built-in bookcases that stretched across the back wall, and an exposed brick wall.
His room was slightly smaller than mine, so I refused to believe there wasn’t a deeper, insidious reason he chose it.
Before I could ask him, a brown-and-yellow blur stirred between us.
