Page 39 of Seven Year Itch
“I’m still trying to figure out your sex club shenanigans,” Calder says, his deep voice breaking through my racing thoughts.
“Why do you care?”
“Because I’m a curious cat.” He turns over to face me but I can only see his shoulder because of my pillow wall. “Do you have some fetish that he didn’t satisfy?”
“No!” I bark out a dry laugh as my body tenses defensively.
“Are you trying to meet someone? Put yourself back out in the dating pool?”
“No.” I groan and roll away as I feel him drawing closer. “Just let it go, Calder.”
“I can’t,” he exclaims, and his voice is almost panicky. I hear the rustling of sheets and look over my shoulder to see he’s moved to the head-barrier pillow. “Just tell me. It’s killing me.”
“No,” I snipe and look away. “Just drop it.”
Silence descends on us again, and my stomach is in knots over the thought of actually telling Calder why I was at that sex club. It’s unfathomable. Unimaginable. Too horrifying even to consider having the full conversation with him.
“Hey, Dakota...” Calder says in the dark.
I sigh heavily. “What, Calder?”
“You’re not a six.”
“Huh?” I frown and turn to see his profile as he’s stretched out with his arms behind his head, staring up at the ceiling.
“You’re not even an eight.”
“What are you talking about?” Flashes of what I said to him prick back into my mind.
He turns, and his eyes sparkle in the darkness as he hits me with a serious look that tells me I revealed a lot more than I intended to last night. “You said Randal told you that you used to be an eight but now you’re a six.”
I cover my face in horror. “I shouldn’t have told you—”
His warm hands grab my wrists as he pulls them from my face. “You’re neither of those numbers.”
I inwardly curse myself for blurting out whatever drunken, self-deprecating, stupid drivel I must have said last night. I had to do those extra tequila shots, didn’t I? Vacation Dakota is a moron. A stupid, stupid moron.
I cast my eyes down and brace myself for whatever numerical value Calder is going to peg me with. “What am I, then? Come on... get it over with.”
“You’re a ten,” he says quickly, his eyes fixed intently on me. His focus drops to my chest before flicking back up to my eyes. “You’re a pain-in-the-ass ten.”
He turns away from me like he didn’t just say the most shocking thing I would ever have expected him to say. And after a few seconds of silence, he offers a cheery “Good night” that stuns me even further.
“Good night,” I reply breathlessly as my head spins. How the hell am I supposed to sleep after that?
Chapter 13
Gaslighting the Bad Girl
Dakota
I wake the next morning to the feel of something strange moving on top of my head. My eyes crack open to sunlight streaming into the palapa, and it takes a second for me to understand what exactly is going on.
It’s Calder’s hand toying with my hair. I roll over to discover he’s lying on top of my pillow barrier, ass up and completely invading my space.
“Calder, you’re on my side,” I hiss, shoving his arm away from me. “And were you just... petting me?”
“What?” His voice cracks as his eyes blink away the sleep, flinching when they open to the bright sunlight bathing our entire bed. He frowns and shakes his head violently as he shifts back to his side.
