She swallows nervously and tries again. I can barely make out her words, they're spoken so softly.
"I'm trying to decide if I should quit my stable, comfortable, and completelyhorriblejob and pursue the career that I really want," she mutters eventually.
I hesitate—and then decide I've already broken the other rules, why not one more. "What do you want to be doing?"
When she looks up at me there's so much hope, so much vulnerability, that I suck in a sudden breath. I stare at her lips, desperate to hear her words. "I want to write novels," she finally admits.
I pause as I contemplate her answer. "And the self-employed part scares you?" I guess.
She looks back down, shaking her head. "I just don't know if I'm good enough. It seems insane to leave a stable job for something I'm not even sure I cando. But I hate what I do now. It seems like a bizarre alternate reality where I'm in the field I want to be in, only somewhere along the way I got lost and ended up in the worst possible version of the field. The writing I do daily is a mockery of the things I want to write."
She looks at me again, that same hope still shining through—this time mixed with a little bit of awe. "I've never told anyone that," she whispers, amazed.
"You've never told anyone you want to write books?"
She shakes her head, still wide-eyed and awestruck. "Not honestly. Sometimes I'll joke with Hailey that I write for fun here and there, but I've never actually admitted out loud that it's a real dream."
I think about her honest response when I told her about my mom a few minutes ago. I want so badly to appease her the way she did me, but I'm not exactly the motivational type. I'm not sure what to tell her right now.
I settle for the truth. "Well, you'll never know until you try. Would you rather live your life with definite regret that you never went after what you wanted, or would you rather live with somepossibledisappointment if you try but fail? That's really what it comes down to." I realize something and make a face at Remy. "Either way, your current job sounds like shit and you should probably quit anyway."
A laugh explodes out of her and I grin, feeling good about my pep talk.
She glances at me in between her fading giggles. "You're right. I've just been too much of a pussy to actually do it." She straightens with a determined look on her face. "Next week, I'm dying my hair blonde and looking for publishers for my book."
I chuckle and give her hair a light tug. "Good girl," I murmur.
Her eyes light with delight before she sighs contentedly and curls into the couch cushions. Her attention lands on the black screen of the TV.
"I forgot we were watching fights when we started all this," she murmurs. She peeks up at me through lowered eyelashes. "Can we start them over?"
Without a word, I turn back to the TV and press play. I settle back into the couch as we slip easily into a comfortable silence.
* * *
I'm on the edge of consciousness, about to doze off, when I feel her against me. My eyes snap open and I turn to look at her. She's fallen asleep and without realizing it, is leaning into my body. As her head finds a comfortable spot on my shoulder she sighs contentedly and nuzzles further into my neck. I feel more of her weight settle on me as she falls into a deeper sleep.
I'm too surprised to even move. Tonight showed me what she looks like without furrowed brows and angry frown lines, but even a skeptically happy face is different from this. Now she looks peaceful. And breathtakingly beautiful.
Before I realize what I'm doing, I lift my hand to brush away the hair that's fallen into her face. I linger on her cheek, amazed at how warm she is, and how soft her skin feels. I feel like I'm stealing an intimate moment by looking at her in such a vulnerable state. But I can't help myself—I can't stop looking at her.
She's so different than what I thought she was. Before she moved in, I always thought she was Jax's annoying childhood friend who walked around with a stick up her ass. I always thought she was pretty hot but the bitchy comments and air of pretentiousness always far outweighed that fact. Especially after our first encounter, I never cared to take a closer look.
Now, I'm realizing my character analysis may have been all wrong.
She's not bitchy, she’s just defensive and protective. And she enjoys the banter with me, though she doesn’t want to believe it yet. Even after she admitted tonight that she doesn't hate me anymore, we still kept up the verbal sparring. I'm realizing I actually enjoy the challenge and entertainment of it.
When I remember my conversation with the bride at the bar last weekend—where I found myself wishing she would snap at me a little more—I realize my thought process is entirely accurate. I do enjoy the banter with Remy.
And I can't really fault her for thinking I'm a dumb brute. Everyone thinks that. It's just a casualty of being a professional fighter. That combined with the fact that I'm silent—or rarely talking about anything other than fighting—means I can't exactly hold that assumption against anyone. But once we got talking and Remy realized I don't quite fit that mold, I could actually see the pleasantly surprised admiration light in her eyes. Instead of the shocked disbelief that I usually get.
As I sit there, stroking her cheek and staring at her, I feel ridiculously happy that she instigated tonight. Despite getting initially defensive at the idea of any kind of get-to-know-me game, I'm glad I got to dig into Remy's life a little bit. Even if that meant letting her dig into mine.
But even sharing the bad parts felt completely natural with her. Opening up about my family was never something I even considered with anyone—let alone a female—but for some reason I didn't even hesitate with Remy. I wanted to tell her about my life. I really wanted her to know me as more than just Tristan the Fighter.
The craziest part is I enjoyed the non-sex just as much as the sex. It’s been a very long time since I’ve wanted to talk to a girl after an orgasm high died down, yet tonight I actually found myself looking forward to it. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy her blowjob or the times we had sex. Because in all honesty, I don't even think there's a word for the level of mind-blowing that our sexual chemistry is. I could probably fuck Remy for the rest of my life and never get tired of her little moans, or the way she feels coming on my fingers. I meant it when I told her we weren't going to stop this anytime soon—days later and Istillcan't stop jerking off to the thought of fucking her.
But once we sat on the couch and started talking, I stopped looking at her lips as something I'd like to see wrapped around my cock, and started looking at them to see what she would tell me about herself.