by Elyse, Drew
“I’ll talk to her.”
“Might want to do that sooner, than later, so she’s got time to extend that invitation too.”
“Got it.”
The witch wouldn’t give up that easy. “You could just go over there, invite them both yourself.”
“Jess?”
“Yeah?”
“Go away.”
She didn’t get offended in the slightest, just chuckled as she went back to her desk.
I drank back the coffee. Dark roast, black, hot. It was exactly what I needed, but also made me realize I hadn’t prepared Gwen’s that morning. I’d done it every day for the last two weeks since she moved in since I was always up first with Thaddeus except that first morning. That way, she’d be able to get her morning fix without the “hassle” as she called it. That morning, though, I’d been too distracted to remember. On top of barely speaking to her and ignoring when she’d asked if I was okay, I was probably looking like a real dick.
Maybe inviting her would help smooth things over.
I pulled out my phone and called her, not wanting to have it sit any longer.
“Hey, Park.”
She didn’t sound off. It didn’t seem like she was annoyed or not wanting to talk to me. With the way she’d been so far—like her one-for-one game to not put me on the spot—she might not have been. She was too understanding for that.
“Hey. How’s work?”
“Same old, same old,” she said, still no sign of anything off. “What’s up?”
“Jess and Braden are having a barbecue at their place tomorrow. Kind of a whole thing. She wanted me to invite you, Caroline, and Steve.”
“Oh, really?”
I wasn’t sure what was behind the surprise in her voice, if it was my behavior earlier or just that Jess would invite her. She’d learn, if she lived with me long, that moving in had made her part of a large circle around Hoffman that would only shun her if she turned out to be a dick—so it wouldn’t happen.
“Yeah. Cassie and her husband will be there, and Jess figured you’d come with me. So she wanted to be sure Caroline knew they were welcome as well.”
“Oh.” The surprise was stronger there, but I didn’t push. “Okay, well, I’ll tell Caroline. I’m sure she’ll have to talk to Steve, but I’ll text you their response.”
“And you?”
“Me?”
“Your response.”
“Right. Yes, I’ll definitely go if you’re okay with it.”
Fuck. There it was.
“I want you there,” I said it plain. I didn’t want her to mistake any part of it. “You can meet everyone, keep me company.”
“I’ll be there.”
Good.
“Let you get back to work.”
“Okay, Park.”
We said our goodbyes, and I made my way up to Jess, feeling a lot less on edge than I had the rest of the morning.
“Gwen’s coming with me. Said she’d update once she had an answer for Caroline.”
Jess smiled, and I could almost hear the evil cackle that should go with it. “With you with you, or…”
“With me as my roommate.”
“Your hot roommate you want to bone. Yes, I know that part. I’m just trying to keep on top of the state of play on when that’ll happen.”
I should have stuck with being isolated at my station in my bad mood.
“Whoa.” I turned to see Danny sidle over. “You’ve got a hot roommate you’re going to hook up with? Shit, first the cat, now this. I’ve learned more about you in the last month than I have in years.”
Fuck. The last thing I needed was everyone at the party tomorrow thinking—or knowing these assholes, talking—about how I wanted to hook up with Gwen.
“Gwen’s my roommate. That’s it.”
“But she’s hot?” Danny clarified.
I didn’t answer, but it didn’t matter. Jess was already nodding.
“Really cute, in a sweet way, but she’s also got a great body. And she works at the animal shelter, so the sweet isn’t just a look.” She saw the look I gave her that told her to shut the hell up, and she just kept at it. “She was in here twice. She got that four seasons branch tattoo.”
Danny scratched his head. “Yeah, I remember that. Can’t say I remember her too well, but it was a killer piece.”
“I’m done with this conversation.”
I started to walk away, but Jess groaned. “Come on, just chill. I’m not going to say anything tomorrow to make her uncomfortable. I just think she’d be good for you.”
“She also lives with me, so I’m not going there,” I declared, and kept moving.
“Your loss,” she muttered.
I didn’t argue, because I knew damn well she was right.
Chapter Eighteen
Gwen
I got off the phone with Park and dropped my head flat to my desk. The impact ricocheted through my head, but I barely felt it over the headache I already had. The same one I’d been living with for the last two weeks. Caroline came back to the office to find me like that a few minutes later.
“This looks healthy.”
I grunted at my desk.
“Want to talk about it?”
No. Yes.
What did I know anymore?
I lifted my head enough to bring my elbows up onto the desk and put my face in my hands. It felt better to do this without being able to see anything.
“Want to go to a barbecue tomorrow?”
“What?”
“Jess and Braden are hosting a barbecue tomorrow. Park just called to invite and to tell me to extend that to you and Steve,” I explained.
“So you’re going with Park to an event with his circle of friends?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, Steve and I are definitely coming.”
I knew that would be her answer. Still, “Shouldn’t you check with your husband?”
She flicked out a hand, finally going to her own desk. “Steve goes where I tell him. Plus, barbecue means grilled food and beer. He’ll be on board.”
Well, that was easy enough.
Why couldn’t everything be easy?
I dropped my head again, not caring about the solid thunk it made on the way down.
“I sense that was not all that’s on your mind.”
I might have laughed, but I was too sunk in the headache.
“How wrong is it exactly to ask your roommate out? Or… I don’t know… jump him when he walks around the apartment half naked?”
Caroline laughed. The demon who had started inhabiting her body seemed to enjoy the torture I’d been enduring. The Caroline I knew didn’t take such joy in other’s suffering.
“I don’t know how much more I can take.”
Every day started with shirtless Park and his tattoos and his sexiness. Not to mention the fact that the way he talked to and bonded with Thaddeus who’d never been all that into people was beyond cute. Then there was the whole making-my-coffee thing. The boyfriends I’d had weren’t half as attentive as Park was, and he wasn’t even getting anything out of it.
There was the relative respite of coming into work, but Caroline made sure her constant questions about him made “relative” the operative word there.
Then, I’d go home and end my day with more of Park. Every evening, whenever it was that we both got home, we’d hang out together. He didn’t retreat to his room or give me any indication he expected me to go hide out in mine. We’d hang out, watch TV or a movie, chat. We’d played more games of one-for-one to keep getting to know each other. He’d show me designs he was working on and even ask my thoughts.
And I was so sunk that half the time I let go and imagined that we were the couple it sometimes felt like we were. Because I was an idiot. Those fantasies flew out the window when I had to crawl into bed every night alone but burdened with the other type of fantasies that had become a constant of late.
Caroline still didn’t say anything, so I d
id. “I knew moving in with him was stupid.”
I did. I’d already been mired in the crush I’d had on him pretty much since the start. Living with him, spending more time with him, it wasn’t helping that situation.
“You could just go for it,” Caroline decided to contribute.
I’d been considering it. Every day, it seemed more appealing. Every day, I wondered if I was letting fear hold me back in a way I’d promised myself to stop allowing.
But. “He doesn’t share.”
“Sorry?”
“Park,” I clarified, “he’s really closed off. We talk so much, but I still feel like I know nothing about him. He hasn’t mentioned anything about his life growing up, his family, anything. Nearly everything he’s shared has been just stuff from the last few years.”
It was the big thing that held me back, and I’d been reminded harshly that morning.
I walked into the kitchen and saw Park, as expected. Only, instead of facing out into the apartment like he usually did, he was hunched over onto the counter. He also had a shirt on already. I wasn’t sure if I was thankful for that or disappointed.
Okay, I knew I was disappointed, but it also might be for the best.
“Morning,” I greeted.
He glanced over his shoulder at me. “Hey.”
This was different. Not that I expected him to wait on me, but every morning since that first, I’d come into the room to be handed a cup of coffee. He didn’t often say much, but he usually asked if I slept okay. I’d answer and tell him he didn’t have to make my coffee. He’d ignore that last.
Maybe the time had come that he was done with the coffee routine, and that didn’t bother me. What I didn’t much like was the fact that there was tension in every line of his body as he turned back to his own cup, lifted it, and drank down the last.
“You okay?”
“Fine.”
As if that word wasn’t indication enough most of the time that someone was anything but, the clipped way he said it gave him away.
I didn’t want to push, wasn’t sure it was my place to, but I felt compelled to at least give a little nudge.
“You’re sure?”
He didn’t answer that. It wasn’t uncommon for Park to choose not to respond, but his silence on top of his manner had me getting tense now.
He took his mug to the sink, rinsed it, and set it down. All of this without speaking or even looking my way. Only once he’d done that and then repeated the same with Thaddeus’s now empty food dish did he acknowledge me again.
“I’m heading into the shop early. Be back later.”
He’d told me about how Sailor’s Grave had a studio in the back for the artists to work on whatever projects they wanted, and it wasn’t the first time he’d gone in before their normal hours to use that space. Still, it felt like he was looking for a way to escape me.
“Okay. Have a good day.”
Within five minutes, he was gone. No goodbye, no anything.
I was still in the kitchen, not even having started my own coffee that I’d fixed up while he’d gotten his shoes on, left wondering what I’d done wrong.
“A lot of men aren’t really chatty about things that way,” Caroline commented, bringing me back to the room.
“Yeah, but Park takes it to a different level. He doesn’t even hint at things much. I’ve gotten enough to know whatever came before wasn’t good, but no idea in what way that is. And he’s careful about it, deliberate in what things he will say so as not to give anything away. It isn’t like he’s just past it and doesn’t go back to that place, it’s like he avoids it fervently.”
She mulled that over. “Still, it doesn’t mean he won’t get to a place where he feels up to sharing.”
She was right. I knew that. I was just feeling the sting of that morning and was worried about how that would have played out if we were something more.
“Yeah.”
Caroline was typing something, so it took me by surprise when, without pausing, she announced. “I think you should do it.”
“What?”
“Ask him out.”
“I know you do.”
She shrugged, still working, but replied, “You never know, getting over the awkwardness for one minute could change your life.”
She was right. Unfortunately, she wasn’t considering that that change wasn’t guaranteed to be a positive one.
“I should warn you.”
I was in the passenger seat of Parker’s coupe, and he’d just parked on a quiet street lined with nice bungalows when he said that.
“Warn me about what?” I didn’t keep the nerves out of my voice. Coming here, meeting a bunch of people that were a part of Park’s life, I’d already been anxious. Hearing that had not helped.
He gave me that smirk of his.
Whatever had been up yesterday morning was a thing of the past when he’d gotten home last night. It had just been us again as we’d been since I moved in. And that morning, when I’d made my way into the kitchen, I’d been greeted with my coffee already prepared.
“Braden’s proposing,” he answered.
“Oh my god.”
He nodded. “I haven’t gotten a call or text from Jess yet, so I imagine it’s happening today while we’re all here.”
“Oh my god.”
The smirk turned into a full grin.
“He’s going to propose in front of a bunch of people?”
I got a shrug. “Jess isn’t one to shy away from dramatics. Braden knows that.”
“Wow.”
“I don’t know what he’s got planned, just thought I’d give you a heads up that things could be getting crazy in here.”
“Right.”
“Ready?”
Ready? To go in and meet all his friends and coworkers and whoever else, all in the midst of a big, important life moment for someone that meant a lot to him? Oh yeah, sure. Totally.
“Mhm.”
Grin still tipping up his lips, he assured me, “They’ll love you.”
He sounded so sure, like he knew from experience, and it made me melt. “Okay.”
He led me in, only to be stopped as soon as we made it through the door by a shout.
“You’re here!”
I looked around Park to see Jess with a huge, mega-watt smile lighting up her face as she came right for us. Without slowing, she threw her arms around Park, who I could actually feel stiffen from the surprise at it.
From my vantage point, I could see the big, bold blue sapphire and diamond ring on her finger. It looked like Braden had already popped the question after all.
The man in question came around the corner, leaning against a wall and taking in the scene with an indulgent smile on his face. Really, he was a sight. If we could get him in that charity calendar, he’d have to be on the cover. We’d sell out in no time. Maybe we could put Jess behind the camera so he’d even have that adoring gaze in the pictures, too.
Jess had pulled back from her hug now and was wiggling her left hand around to show off her ring.
“He told me,” she said Park as I focused back on them. “Thank you.”
They were having a moment. I didn’t understand the details of it, but I felt the need to step to the side and make myself less intrusive in it either way.
“You must be Gwen.” I turned to see Braden had approached.
“Yes. Hi.” I took his offered hand. “And congratulations.”
“Thank you.” His smile was warm, both on me and when he took a quick glance over at his fiancée.
Jess eventually broke away from Park and turned to beam at me. “You came!”
She moved in to hug me, too. I returned it, saying “Congratulations” to her as well.
“Thanks. Come on out back. You can meet everyone.”
“Goddess,” Braden called before she could drag me through the house. Jess froze and turned to look at him. “Helping me with the food?”
“Right.” She stepped over to
him and waved Park and I on. “You to go, we’ll be out in a minute.”
Park came right up next to me, settling his hand on my lower back. Awareness of that touch shot through me, and I drifted closer to him on instinct—and the fact that I wanted to do nothing else on this earth in that moment more.
“They seem really happy.”
“They are,” he confirmed. With how close he and Jess seemed to be, he would know.
“What was that before? Why was Jess thanking you?”
He didn’t answer right away, and I was sure he wasn’t going to. I’d chalked it up to another secret he wasn’t ready to share when he spoke up. “Braden couldn’t settle on a ring, didn’t feel like anything he found fit for Jess. So a few of us got in on looking for things. I found the one he decided on.”
Through the hemming and hawing about ‘a bunch of us’ and so on, I heard the real story. Braden, because he loved Jess in one way, wanted to get her the perfect ring. And Park, because he loved her in a very different way, also dedicated himself to that mission.
I wanted to tell him that I thought he was one of the sweetest men I’d ever known, but I knew he didn’t like compliments. I wanted to tell him that everything I learned about him made me fall a little more. Instead, I just drifted another inch closer to his body as he led me outside.
Chapter Nineteen
Gwen
“Is Gwen your girlfriend?”
I was standing with Park, Caroline, Steve, Park’s coworker, Liam, and his girlfriend, Kate. Steve had been talking about a vague tattoo idea he had, while Liam and Park bounced around suggestions on how to refine it. Liam and Kate’s easy manner, the warm—but not scorching—late summer day and the celebratory atmosphere had me relaxing.
At least, until an adorable little girl with blonde ringlets, a pink tutu, and a t-shirt declaring her a princess came running up asking that question.
I’d already been introduced to Emmy, along with her father, Sketch, who was Park’s boss. I’d also met his wife, Ash, and their other two daughters. Emmy had dominated the conversation, though, asking about Thaddeus. There was an indulgent way even Park—which surprised me—interacted with her that made me think her shirt was quite true, at least for her own little kingdom among these people.
