Page 37 of Another Christmas from Hell

Wondered why the man that she shouldn’t be thinking about was walking into her apartment carrying bags from her aunt’s bakery.

“Sorry I’m late,” Bryce said, dropping the bags on the coffee table as he sat down next to her and pulled a coffee out of the bag and handed it to her before grabbing one for himself. “What did I miss?”

“Many things,” Cayley mumbled, unable to help but frown when he reached over and grabbed the notepad off her lap, which was followed by a nod and him stealing the pen out of her hand to make notes of his own. “What are you doing here?” Cayley asked, taking a sip of her much-needed coffee.

“We’re supposed to be working on the Dawson Project together,” Bryce said as he went over her notes.

“I was going to make you a copy of my notes.”

“And while I appreciate that, it would probably save a lot of time if we did it this way instead of playing email tag,” Bryce murmured absently as he paused in what he was doing to search through the files on the couch between them.

She opened her mouth to argue, but he was right. It would go faster if he was here, Cayley thought as she took one last sip of her coffee and put it down and got back to work. They worked quietly for the next ten hours. When she had a question, Bryce would stop what he was doing to explain it to her, taking his time to make sure that she understood why they had to do something a certain way. That would be followed by helping him work out the details for this project, figuring out where he should start and what needed to be done to get there.

They made sandwiches for lunch and ordered pizza for dinner, and when it was finally time to call it a night, Bryce dropped his notebook on the coffee table, absently murmured goodnight around a yawn and headed for the door while she sat there thinking about how much she liked being around him. The silence never got awkward and she had to wonder if that was because they grew up together, but she knew that wasn’t it.

She loved Sean even though he was like the annoying brother that she never asked for and desperately wanted to beat the shit out of and could happily spend all day with him, but at some point, she always found herself debating grabbing whatever was within reach and beating the shit out of the annoying bastard. With Bryce, it had been so easy, so comfortable, and just…she couldn’t explain it, but it was something that she’d never felt around anyone before.

He always made her feel safe. It was the one thing that let her know that everything would be okay when she was little and her father had to work all the time. No matter how scared she was that her father was going to suddenly go away like her mother did, Bryce was there.

He was always there.

Bryce made her feel safe even when he was glaring at her, and God, did that man love to glare, Cayley thought as she decided to call it a night and headed to her bathroom and found herself wondering why she never felt this way about Kevin. When she was with Kevin, it had always been pleasant and easy, but…

It never made her feel like she was exactly where she was supposed to be.

She found herself thinking about how much she liked sleeping in Bryce’s arms, how good it felt when he touched her, and how much she wanted to-

Not happening.

This was not a good idea, Cayley told herself before her mind could go where it definitely had no business going. It was a very bad idea. One that she wasn’t even going to consider because it wasn’t happening. The first time she slept in his bed, it was to get away from the annoying bastard that had been unusually quiet today, and last night, she only slept in his room because-

She wanted to, Cayley admitted to herself even as she told herself that was the end of it. She wasn’t sleeping in his bed again. She wasn’t. That was it. She was not going to do something incredibly stupid like crawl back into Bryce’s bed. She wasn’t because she didn’t need to. She was fine where she was and didn’t need him. She-

Wanted to go crawl back in his bed, Cayley thought with a grumble as she pulled off her clothes and took a quick shower. Crawling back into his bed wasn’t an option, especially since the last thing that she needed was for Bryce to think that she was obsessed with him. She wasn’t, but she’d be lying if she said that she didn’t like being around him, like the way that he touched her, and-

“What the hell am I doing?” Cayley found herself wondering as she shook her head in disgust.

There was something seriously wrong with her if she was thinking about Bryce James this much, Cayley decided as she forced herself to focus on getting ready for bed. Grumbling to herself, she rubbed lotion on her skin in a half-assed attempt at a skincare routine, pulled on a light green cotton camisole and matching panties and reluctantly left the bathroom, resigning herself to sleeping alone.

For a moment, Cayley considered crashing on the couch and starting aHarry Pottermarathon, but she knew that would only lead to her coming up with an excuse to make her way across the hallway and crawl into Bryce’s bed. Wondering when she became this pathetic, she walked into her bedroom and-

“Did you miss me?” the annoying bastard asked from the comfort of her bed, where he was devouring a bag of chips.

“Why are you doing this to me?” Cayley found herself asking.

“Because you need me,” Sean said, nodding solemnly.

“I really don’t, though,” Cayley said, biting back a sigh as she gestured for him to get off her bed.

“Why are you lying to yourself?” Sean asked, settling more comfortably on her bed.

“Why are you leaving me with no choice but to kill you in your sleep?” Cayley asked, once again gesturing for him to get the hell out.

“I like to challenge people,” Sean said, nodding solemnly, “It’s my thing.”

“Please leave,” she said, praying that he took pity on her tonight.

“I will,” Sean promised her before adding, “just as soon as you tell me what I want to know.”

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