Page 14 of The Heart You've Borrowed

Lio

She falls asleep easily next to me, on the other hand, I can’t fall asleep to save my life. She’s curled up next to me and I can tell by the way she’s breathing that she is in a deep sleep. I’m happy she’s finally sleeping, I know how hard it is for her to actually sleep. I remember all our late-night phone calls in high school when she couldn’t sleep. I look at the clock on the nightstand and it reads a little past four in the morning.

I groan and try to get comfortable, we need to be up in a few hours and I really don’t want to spend her first day on the job exhausted. I take one last look at her before I close my eyes and hope that somehow I can fall asleep.

When I wake up in the morning I feel like I’m sitting right next to a heater. I slowly open my eyes and look around the room. It takes me a few seconds to remember that I slept at Charlie’s last night. I look to my side and see that we are completely intertwined with each other. Her head is on my chest and our legs are twisted together. My arms are holding her tightly to me and my heart starts beating faster. Would it be like this to wake up to her every morning? I shake my head and try to get the thought out of my head. She sees me as her best friend, and that’s all I’ll ever be to her. I love her but if all she ever wants is to be friends then that’s fine with me. Just having her back in my life is enough for me. I gently pull away from her and grab my phone off the nightstand. We don’t have to be downstairs for another hour so I make my way to her kitchen and start a pot of coffee. If there’s one thing I remember about her, it’s that she is a monster without her coffee. Once it’s done I make it how she likes it, a crap ton of sugar and creamer and bring it to her. When I walk back into her room she’s starting to sit up in bed.

“Hey.” She smiles when she sees me.

“Hey.” I smile back and hand her the coffee, she happily takes it and takes a long sip of it.

“What time is it?” She stretches her other arm above her head, yawning.

“A little past seven, we have about an hour until we need to be downstairs.”

“Okay perfect I guess I should get ready. Is there a dress code?”

“Nope, just jeans and a T-shirt will work. We have AC down there but it does get really hot some days. This Texas heat is a bitch.” I laughed.

“Yeah, I woke up feeling like I was on fire.” She shook her head. I look the other way, she must not know we were cuddling all morning.

“You get used to it after a while.” I tried to play it off.

“Thanks for staying the night, I really appreciate it.”

“Of course. Whatever you need, silly girl. I’ll leave you to it. I’ll be in the living room whenever you’re ready.” I grabbed her empty cup from her and leave her room.

A half-hour later she comes out in the tightest black jeans I think I’ve ever seen. I try not to check out her ass when she walks past me to the kitchen but god damn, I can’t help myself. She is by far the prettiest woman I’ve ever seen and her damn body. She has a body that deserves to be fucking worshiped, from her long legs to her thick thighs and round ass. What I wouldn’t give to be the one to be able to worship her every damn day. I don’t know how Jett can live with himself knowing he fucked this up. If Charlie Mae was mine, the whole world would know it and I would spend the rest of my life showing her just how much I fucking love her.

Chapter Eleven

Charlie

I woke up with Lio’s arms wrapped around me, what the heck? I tried not to panic, I woke up before him but I tried to pull myself away without waking him up. I think. I don’t really remember. I remember waking up and him having his arms around me and my head on his chest. I didn’t want to move at first. For the first time in years, I felt at peace. I didn’t usually like to sleep next to someone else since I’ll admit, I am a bed hog but sleeping next to him felt right, it felt good. But I can’t let myself get comfortable like that here.

It’s not that Lio isn’t amazing, he is. But I’m not here for that. At least not right now. I need to focus on finding myself again and starting over. If I were to even try to jump into a relationship with him right now I know I would break his heart. I’m still messed up after everything with Jett, I need to get over everything that happened first and then maybe then I can think about trying things with someone else.

When I leave the room I can feel Lio’s eyes on me. I didn’t pack too many work clothes so I had to settle for a tight pair of black jeans and a T-shirt. Once I get my first paycheck I will be getting some new clothes. I don’t even really know what the job duties are so I need to make sure I dress the part the best way I can until I can get some new clothes.

“You ready?” I ask as I turn to the door.

“Yup.” He clears his throat and grabs his keys off the table.

When we leave the apartment he locks it up and hands the keys to me. Explaining that one is for the apartment and one is for the front of the shop since you have to go through the shop to get to the apartment. When we get to the bottom of the stairs he leads me down a hallway to a back office.

“This will be your office, we can get whatever you need to make it feel more like you but this was the best I could do on short notice.” He opens the door for me. It’s a pretty big office, with a desk and a rolling chair, a couch and two chairs in front of the desk, a TV mounted on the wall, and a window that looks out onto the parking lot.

“It’s perfect, thank you.” I smile at him as I make my way behind the desk.

“So you will basically be doing all our bookkeeping and taking orders and requests. The hours are good, Monday through Friday from eight to four. The pay isn’t what you were making back home but it’s not terrible. You’ll start at twenty an hour and then after a few months, we can discuss a raise. No one will really bother you back here, it’s just me and my business partner Jackson who are here most days. We have a few other people but they rarely come in here. So you can play music if you want or watch TV, whatever you want.” He slips his hands into his pockets.

“Thank you so much, Lio, really. This means a lot to me. I won’t let you down, I promise.” I walk over to him and hug him.

“I know you won’t. Jackson will help you figure out the bookkeeping and how to do the phones and whatnot. He’s better at all that than I am.” He laughs.

“Sounds good.” I nodded.

“And like I said you don’t have to pay rent upstairs so you’ll be able to save a lot of money but you don’t have to leave anytime soon. You can live up there for as long as you want Charlie. I mean it. Take your time. I can take you grocery shopping later today to get whatever you need and we have an extra company truck you can use too. I’ve already added you to the insurance and everything so you’ll be good to go.”

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