Page 65 of Blindside Sinner

Swallowing, I do as he says. We’re quiet for a little bit, his eyes closed, his breathing slow and even. That shock of hair fallen over his forehead is still there, so without thinking, I reach over and brush it away.

But when I go to pull my hand back, pretty damn sure that I just crossed averyfirm line in the sand, he grabs my wrist. “Don’t,” he murmurs. “Stay. More.”

I gulp again. He pulls my hand to the crown of his head and lets it rest there. I let my fingertips trace over his scalp, parting his silky hair into rows. He lets out a little sigh, halfway between a snore and rumble. It vibrates through every cell in my body like I’m a wind chime.

“Tell me about how you fell out of the tree.”

“It’s a stupid story. You don’t want to hear it.”

“I do,” he insists quietly but firmly. “I just want to hear you talk. Tell me.”

I clear my throat, my fingers still roaming through his hair. “There was this old lady, Miss Mae, who lived across the hall from my apartment. She was a widow, no kids, with the worst cat who ever existed. Precious. She used to walk it all the time, and Precious would hiss at me every time I passed.” I laugh at the memory of that angry little devil. “I came home one day and she was standing at the base of a tree in the courtyard, begging Precious to come down. As if cats listen. But it wouldn’t come and no one else was walking by, so she starts pleading with me, ‘Go up and save my cat! Please, save my baby!’”

Beck is quiet and still. “Keep going,” he encourages softly without opening his eyes. “I’m listening.”

“Alright. So, yeah. I didn’t know what else to do and the fire department said they couldn’t come, so that’s how I found myself shimmying up this stupid, leafless tree to try and save this stupid, hairless monster. I get close, I reach out for it, and the cat goes wild. Absolutely bananas. It dug its nails into my skin and I freaked out so bad that I just let go, like an idiot. I fell out of the tree and cracked my head on the ground. Then I spent three days in bed watching trash TV and eating ice cream. The End.”

He smiles. “Good story. Cats suck.”

“Cats suck,” I agree. I start to stand. “But you should try to rest. I’ll just go?—”

He grabs my wrist again before I’m back on my feet. “Sloan,” he says, finally looking at me again, “I’d really like you to stay.” With a pained grimace, he scoots over on the mattress and pats the warm indent he just vacated.

“Beck…” As much as I want to lie beside him and hold him, there isn’t much worse I could do to myself. To my heart. To the feelings I refuse to acknowledge no matter how bad they insist on making themselves known.

“I’ll keep my hands to myself,” he promises. “But I don’t want you to go and I don’t want you to sit at the edge of the mattress like you have a two by four strapped to your spine. We can relax in the same bed without it being about sex.”

He is vastly overestimating my powers of restraint. But I give up the fight and lie down beside him. “Okay.” I turn to face him and tuck my hands under my cheek. “Will you tell me about your family?”

That’s the first thing to make him frown in a while. “I don’t really have much to do with them anymore,” he murmurs sort of brusquely.

There’s a story there, I think. I want to hear it, but I’m not going to press him. Not now, while he’s vulnerable. Maybe another time.

Instead, I just say “Okay” again. Then I lie still beside him, listening to him breathe. I can see his face in the sliver of light coming through his bedroom window and I think I should get up and pull it closed, but his bed is a lot more comfortable than the one in the apartment and he smells good and the rhythm of his inhales and exhales is lulling me into the closest thing to happiness I’ve felt in a long, long time.

Beckett Daniels is human, as it turns out. He falls and he bleeds and he likes having his head scratched.

I like that about him.

33

SLOAN

All too soon, morning is shining in on us. I woke him up every few hours, per the doctor’s orders, just to make sure he was still in his right mind. But at some point in the middle of the night, my head wound up on his chest and his arms wound up around me and our bodies wound up pressed together beneath the blankets.

When I stir, his hold loosens. “Good morning.”

I look at him wondering at the chance I don’t have morning breath. I don’t risk speaking, but I smile.

There is a certain awkwardness to waking up in the bed of a man who might only be looking at me with desire smoldering behind his eyes not because he likes me, but because he woke up with a hard-on, or because he has a concussion and forgot he hates me.

I can’t just lie here and pretend that the awkwardness doesn’t exist. So I sit up, scrub my hands up and down my face, then finger-comb my hair into some semblance of order. “I’m going to get us something to eat.”

He is sitting up now, too. “Sloan.” When I turn to look at him, he’s adorably mussed and still sleepy-eyed. The effect is damned near mesmerizing. “Thank you for last night.”

I grin. “You were actually sweet for a change. I should have given you a brain injury a month ago.”

He chuckles, which takes me by surprise. I’ve never seen him carefree like this. “Admit it: you love how annoying I am.”

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