“We shouldn’t have done this,” I said, shifting to the edge of the bed and getting up. “Ryan will kill us.”
“He doesn’t have to know,” Parker said.
“You’re damn right he doesn’t have to know.” I covered my face with my hands. “How could I be so stupid?”
“Hey,” Parker said, shifting closer to me. He gently peeled my hands away from my face. “It’s not a big deal. It’s going to be okay.”
“How do you know?”
“Because we’ll make it okay. What can Ryan really be so mad about?”
I tried to figure it out. Maybe Parker was right. Maybe it wasn’t such a big deal. We were all adults, after all.
Right?
“Come back to bed,” Parker said. “We can do with a bit of sleep.”
I nodded. He was right. I was suddenly exhausted.
I lay down next to him. At some point, he’d gotten rid of his condom, though I hadn’t seen it. He pulled the covers over us and pulled me against him so that I lay with my head on his shoulder, and his heart beat against my cheek.
His warmth seeped into me, and in his arms, it felt like everything was going to work out just fine. Even if I couldn’t logically figure it out.
I would worry about that later.
8
PARKER
Thisweekendwasamistake. I’m so sorry. I don’t think I can take the contract for your apartment. Keep the designs I sent you. Good luck. Emily.
Damn it!
She didn’t want to see me again. I’d slept with Emily Jenkins, and now she wanted nothing to do with me.
How the hell had that happened?
“Hello?” Chaz said from his spot on my leather armchair.
“What?” I asked.
“Didn’t you hear anything I said?”
He’d been saying something about Mom’s birthday party.
“Sorry. Distracted. I got a message ... for work.”
No fucking way was I going to tell him what was going on with Emily. He wouldn’t get it. And talking to him about women was weird. Chaz didn’t do the whole dating thing anymore—not since he lost Jenna. We respected that. Losing a wife was hard.
And we weren’t going to rub one-night stands in his face.
Was that what Emily had been? A one-night stand?
I guess it was, since she’d called everything off now and didn’t want to see me again. It was the fuckingdefinitionof a one-night stand.
But I wanted to see her again. I didn’t just want to fuck and forget. Not with her. Everything about her was different. She looked at the world with a sort of wonder, seeing what could be. And her passion was contagious. Not just for what she did, but in bed too. She had a zest for life that I wished I had.
“So, what are we going to do?” Chaz asked. “You can’t keep putting this off. If we wait too long, we won’t find a venue.”