He wasn’t f**king with me.
I swallowed hard, glancing away, but he quickly maneuvered my chin so that I was forced to face him.
“I didn’t tell you that to make you feel sorry for me. It’s just a fact. My dad hated me . . . I wasn’t something he wanted.” The way he said it—in the same easy tone he used when we discussed whether or not to go surfing or paddle boarding—made my stomach feel sour. A strangled sound burst from the back of my throat. “And there you go again, feeling bad,” he muttered.
“How the hell do you expect me to feel after you tell me your dad hit you with a fishing pole?”
He narrowed his eyes. “People have had way more f**ked up childhoods than I did. My mum loved me. That’s all I needed —fuck . . . it’s all I still need.”
But his mother was gone. He’d said as much to me before. “I’m sorry, Cooper. So f**king sorry.”
He slid down in the bed, straddling me, pressing his erection against my bottom. He murmured something about how inconvenient the sheet draped across me was and then kissed the spot between my shoulder blades.
“Stop saying sorry—” Cooper started, but then he paused. His fingertips were gentle as he swept my hair away from my left shoulder. Then, carefully, so as not to press too much of his body weight down on top of me, he bent over to examine me. “It’s amazing what you find when the lights are on,” he said in a low voice before tracing the tip of his tongue along the small tattoo that ran across the soft skin behind my left ear.
I trembled and curled my hands into the sheets.
“Five, nine, ten,” he whispered, reading the numbers aloud. “What’s it mean?”
I twisted my head to glance over my shoulder into his eyes. “It’s a date. When I lost someone that I loved.” I was surprised I was being so honest with him.
I’d gotten the tattoo when I was high, and my mom had flipped out about it.
“You can’t have both, Willow. You can’t keep a secret and then go and get a goddamn prison tattoo advertising his birthday,” she’d hissed.
“It’s not a prison tattoo,” I’d retorted. “And nobody knows what it means.”
“We went through so much trouble making sure this didn’t get out.” She’d said, reminding me of how she and Dad had sent me away from Los Angeles for months to live with her step-mother in Bumfuck, Oregon. “Please be a bit more grateful.”
“Grateful? You let me sign a screwed up agreement and I don’t even know what happened.”
After that, I hadn’t talked to her for nearly a month, and I’d spent the majority of those thirty days forgetting that I even got the tattoo in the first place.
Cooper pulled me away from the bitter memory. “What are you thinking about?”
I shrugged. “Nothing.”
“You’re going to rip my sheets,” Cooper said in a soothing voice, taking his mouth, and then his hands, away from my flesh. I focused down at the cotton clenched in each of my hands and released it. “I’m not going to push you to talk, Wills. I’m not going to push you to do anything. But at the risk of sounding like a total pu**y, I’ll listen to anything that comes out of your mouth.”
Burying my face into the sheets, I nodded. When I lifted my head a moment later, there was a tiny smile curving the corners of my lips. “Your sheets smell like your girly ass shampoo.”
“Smart ass,” he said, rolling me over. Our tongues and lips tangled together and that ache crept from my stomach, in between my legs. I wanted to get lost in him again.
And again.
We stayed in his bed until I could no longer ignore the sound of my cell phone vibrating inside of my bag. There were a couple missed calls from Kevin, but the newest was a text from Jessica.
10:39 a.m.: I’ve got to tell you what I did last night, you busy?
Apparently, she’d forgotten about how she’d told me to suck my fears about filming the movie the f**k up the night before.
Cooper rolled out of the bed, giving me a knee-weakening smile over his shoulder as he disappeared naked in the tiny bathroom attached to the bedroom. I heard the whistle of water running from the pipes a moment later. Exhaling, I cocooned myself in the sheet and messaged Jessica back as I waited for him to finish up so I could shower. Will call you later, okay?
She texted back with a winking smiley, and I flushed all over.
Half an hour later after we had both taken our showers, Cooper offered to make me breakfast.
“I’m not a very good cook,” he explained as he prepared a feast of Toaster Strudels and fresh fruit. “And Eric is probably going to bitch about me touching his strawberry strudel stash.” He tossed the empty box into the trashcan before handing me my plate.
“I basically live on a diet of organic waffles and grilled chicken and fish. I’d say this was pretty f**king awesome.” I sat down across from him at the table and he gave me a smile. “By the way, where is Eric?” The house had been quiet all morning, and I was half-expecting Eric to pop around the corner with a video camera attached to his hand.
I shuddered at the thought.
Cooper took a drink of his orange juice. “Staying with Paige at her apartment. He, um, wanted to give me the house to myself for the weekend.”
Luckily my phone buzzed right then and interrupted us before I could start freaking out about what the implications behind Cooper’s words. I picked up the phone and stared down at the screen, groaning when I saw a text from Kevin asking me to call him ASAP to iron out the details for tomorrow. I sent him a message back telling him that I was working out and that I’d call him as soon as I was finished.