He laughs. “I’m not on anything.”
“Well, clearly—”
“Remember, I got dibs on this room,” he says as he opens the door and flips on a switch.
I push past him and walk in.
“What the hell is this?” I gasp.
He laughs. “A bathroom, man.”
“Where the fuck did it come from?”
“Well, when a mommy and daddy bathroom fall in lust—”
“This room ain’t yours,” I tell him.
“Bullshit! You agreed, like, four times,” he whines like a little kid.
He’s right; I did say that.
“I am so using this bathroom.”
“Fine, but shit in the other one. I don’t wanna smell you when I have company. Did you see that bed? It’s huge.”
The kid is in heaven. He’s ecstatic. It’s annoying, but also good to see him like this as opposed to his normal pissy self.
Then I hear a hiss and look back in the bathroom to see water jetting out from under the sink.
“Shit!” I rush in and grab a towel.
“I fixed that earlier,” he says from behind me.
I lift the towel I had placed over the water and see silver tape dangling.
“Duct tape isn’t a fix, Buck.” I reach under the sink and turn the water off from the valve.
“Worked great for me. I had a fucking bath, man.”
“Great. Now go get dressed and sweep and mop the floor while I run to the damn super center and grab some plumbing tape,” I tell him, walking out of the damn bathroom I never knew about and into his fucking room with a real bed. Suddenly, I want to throw Buck out.
“I just took a bath, and now you want me to clean?” he asks.
I look back at him. “Yes. Yes, the fuck I do.”
“Fine,” he grumbles.
When I return with the shit I need to fix the water leak, I lock the gym door behind me and head toward the apartment stairs. I hear Buck laugh as I walk up. Then I hear another laugh, one from a female. I know that laugh.
I walk in to see Tatum and Buck sitting at the island, eating Chinese food.
She looks up and smiles. “Hungry?”
“Starving,” I answer.
“She stopped over because you didn’t message her, and she was worried,” Buck tells me, standing up and stretching before he smiles at me. “She brought a movie.”
“Why don’t you go grab some popcorn or something?” I tell Buck, my eyes not leaving hers. She’s flushed already, and I want to know why. I also want to bury my cock inside her.
“You were just—”
“Buck,” I cut him off, still looking at her.
“Fine. You wanna tie a sock on the doorknob or something?” he asks, chuckling.
“Go,” I say, finally looking away from her to him.
Once he puts on his shoes and walks toward the door, he looks back. “I’ll text before I come back.”
“No need. Just get back here without any damn bruises, you got me?”
He nods. “I got you.”
“Awe,” Tatum says, and I look back at her to see she is smiling. Fucking beautiful smile, too.
As soon as the door shuts, she says, “You didn’t text, and I wasn’t going to come, but then I thought maybe you’d forgotten how already because you’re a man of your word. And then I worried, so I split a bottle of wine with myself and—”
“Oh, so is that why your cheeks are pink?” I ask, setting the bag down.
“It was red wine, so I suppose it’s possible.”
I pull the phone out of my pocket and show it to her. “Battery died.”
“So, what, you don’t know how to charge it?” she asks, standing up and walking over to me. “I can show you how.”
“I bet you can. But let me get Buck’s bathroom taped up first, all right?”
She stops and smiles. It’s a bigger smile than usual. I suppose it’s from the wine.
“Why don’t you have a seat, and I’ll go take care of it,” I tell her before walking quickly into his room, knowing if I don’t do it now, I sure as hell won’t do it later.
I crouch down under the sink and use the tape to fix the stripped piping that was spraying. Then I stand up and look around.
“Unreal,” I say out loud to myself. “A shower I could probably stand under.”
I hear her clear her throat from behind me and look back.
She has the book. Fuck.
“You thought about me today,” she says with that same big smile.
“I suppose I did,” I quip, drying off my hands.
“I thought about you, too.”
“Didn’t expect any less,” I tell her as I run the water to make sure the tape is holding for now. I know damn well it won’t hold for more than a week, maybe two. Then I will have to fix it for real. But not now.
I stand up and rinse my hands off before turning around and looking at her.
Peering up at me through those sexy as hell lashes, she quips, “So, this wall is brick.”