I don’t even realize that I’ve moved until she’s taking a hasty step back. “Don’t touch me,” she whispers. “You can’t be here.”
“There’s no place else I’d rather be,” I tell her.
Her eyes drop away and it nearly kills me. She takes another step away from me and before I know it, she’s crossing the room and dropping down onto her couch. “What are you doing here?” she questions, watching me warily.
I close the door behind me before stepping around a big fucking box and walking deeper into her apartment. I can’t help but take it all in while looking around the huge room. “I just needed to check you were alright.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have bothered,” she says with a slow nod. “I’m fine.”
My eyes return to hers with a smirk playing on my lips loving that not everything about this little she devil has changed. “You’ve always been a great liar, Tully, but you forget that I can read you like a book.”
She lets out a slight huff and looks away. She’s never been able to handle being called out and I absolutely love it. Getting that reaction out of her makes teasing her that much better. “How’d you know where to find me?”
My smirk turns into a full-blown grin. “How do you think?”
“Fucking Noah,” she mutters under her breath. “Absolutely no respect for my privacy.”
“Chill out,” I say, making my way around her living room and checking out the life she’s built for herself. “He’s just worried about you.”
“He was here until two in the morning. I doubt he’s got himself all worked up about me over the past nine hours,” she explains, keeping her eyes on me as I start to wonder if winning her back isn’t going to be as hard as I thought.
“You know better than anyone just how quickly Noah can be worked up,” I say, taking in her bookshelf and admiring how she seems to have organized it by color. It looks fucking awesome, but wouldn’t it make more sense to arrange it by series or author? I could fix it for her, but that would probably get me killed. Tully’s books have always been precious to her and since the last time I saw her, the collection seems to have multiplied.
Tully doesn’t respond, but I don’t expect her to. She’s trying to show me that my presence doesn’t affect her and if I were anyone else, I would have bought the act, but I’m not and she can’t fool me.
I look back over my shoulder to her and watch as her eyes slowly meet mine. “You fixed up my house.”
She shrugs her shoulders. “Yeah, that was years ago when I assumed you were coming home. It wasn’t just me, everyone chipped in. It’s no big deal just forget about it. I have.”
“Uh-huh. The fresh flowers on the dining table really show how you’ve forgotten about it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she murmurs as I start walking down the hallway towards her bedroom and hear her flying up from the couch. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I want to see your place,” I throw back, not relenting in my way down the hall. “Why is there a moving box at the front door?”
“I uh…didn’t think you noticed that.”
“I’ve spent the past four years in the military, I notice everything. Besides, it’s not like it’s right in the doorway or anything. I had to step around the big fucker just to get in.”
I can practically hear her cringe already knowing the answer to my question. After all, I was listening in to her and Spencer arguing about it during the wedding. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I was going to move out.”
“Past tense or present tense?”
“Seriously?” I don’t respond and she knows me well enough to know that I’ll keep asking until I get the answer I’m looking for. She lets out a sigh. “I told Spencer I’d move in with him, but I don’t want to leave my apartment. Not yet. This is my home and I worked hard for it. I’m not ready to give it up.”
I nod. Finally, a straight answer, though there might be a little more to it.
I walk into her bedroom and take a look around. It’s exactly how I pictured her to live. An empty ice-cream tub on her bedside table, cookie and cream flavored, of course. There are books everywhere with her Kindle at the end of her bed, clean washing piled high in a chair, and not to mention an old photo of our pack framed up on her wall right where it should be, right where she can see it, see me. Every fucking night.
I wipe the grin from my face before noticing a little black velvet box on her dresser. I make my way across her bedroom, unable to resist looking inside. “Rivers,” Tully whispers from the door of her bedroom, trying to save me from myself. “Don’t.”