What If You & Me (Say Everything #2) - Roni Loren Page 0,47
time to rest instead of selfishly wanting to soak up more time with her.
After she’d admitted that she was attracted to him, the whole night had taken on a different glow. When he’d first gotten there, he’d felt tentative and unsure about what the situation was. Then when she’d made the comment about how he had to have been attractive when he was a firefighter—past tense—he’d gotten the message. But then she’d quickly corrected his assumption. She thought he was superhot now.
That simple compliment had stirred up something inside him that had been dormant for a long damn time. He hadn’t lost his ability to feel desire after everything happened, but feeling desired was something he hadn’t felt in this new version of his life. It’d been like a shot of adrenaline.
He’d wanted to take back everything he’d said about not dating and being in a weird place and had wanted to pull Andi to him, to kiss her, to show her how he wanted her, to feel her wanting him. To forget that there were any complications with her being his tenant and neighbor, to forget he was in no place to date anyone, to ignore that sex would be all he was capable of offering. But Andi had laid down her own honesty. She had said she was in a strange place, too. She hadn’t told him why or what that meant, but he remembered her statement from the night of the break-in. She never let guys sleep over.
There was a story there, and he had a feeling it was an ugly one. He would respect her boundaries.
Careful not to jostle her, he got up from the couch and grabbed the empty plates and glasses from the coffee table. He went to the kitchen and flipped on the light. Andi’s kitchen was a mirror image of his on the other side, but hers had a lot more color. A bright aqua toaster, a yellow bowl of apples on the counter, and a collection of Super Mario Bros. fridge magnets complete with turtles, redbrick blocks, and green pipes.
He set the dirty dishes in the sink and glanced up. The window above the sink had a small ledge, and Andi had a line of little, round metal bells sitting on it. He’d noticed another set like it on the windowsill in the living room. They didn’t match the rest of her style, so they’d stood out, and he’d wondered if she was one of those people who left Christmas decorations out year-round. He touched one of the bells, but it rolled off the ledge, and he caught it before it could hit the sink. Sensitive little things.
Only then did he realize what they were there for. Noise.
If someone tried to break in through a window, it would send the bells rolling and clanging. He glanced over his shoulder back toward the living room, concern moving through him. Was Andi that frightened? He’d had an alarm installed, and the new dead bolts were top quality. He’d wanted her to feel safe, but obviously, she was still worried. He hated that she felt so insecure in her own place.
A floorboard creaked behind him, and he turned, bell still clutched in his palm.
Andi stood in the doorway, arms crossed like she was cold, and her hair askew from her nap. “I fell asleep on you again.”
“It’s fine. I hadn’t realized how late it’d gotten. I was just picking up the dishes.” He set the bell back on the windowsill carefully and then turned back to her. “I was going to wake you before I headed out.”
Her gaze went to the window, and she rubbed her arms as if chilled. “I see you found my silly security measure.”
He tried to gauge her expression. “You still don’t feel safe.”
She stepped inside the kitchen and shrugged. “I’m not sure I ever feel truly safe, but those were there before the alarm was installed. I left them in case I forget to turn on the alarm.”
“Is there anything I can do? To make you feel more secure here?” he asked, stepping closer, concerned about that haunted look in her eyes.
Andi gave him a wan smile. “It’s not about the house or the neighborhood or anything like that.” She tapped her temple. “It’s all up here, unfortunately. There’s part of me that knows no one is ever one hundred percent safe, that there’s only so much you can do. There is no foolproof plan. But I still try.”