Page 12 of Her Billionaire Boss

“Stay silly.”

That would be easy enough, for her.

CHAPTER FOUR

(Charlotte)

The alarm went off at five-thirty.

Five-thirty in the fucking morning.

I groaned and sat up, rubbing my eyes before checking the time on my phone.“Are you fucking kidding me?”

Matt was already on his feet, cane in hand, headed to the bathroom.And not dragging his feet like a zombie, somehow.

“I get up early, princess,” he tossed over his shoulder as he headed into the bathroom.

I flopped onto my back and stared up at the impossibly high ceiling.This had to be a joke.

When he emerged again, he was whistling.

“Since when do you get up early?”I demanded.“The whole time I’ve been with you—”

“The whole time you’ve been with me, I’ve been on a vacation from life,” he pointed out.“I’m ready to get back to normal.”

“Normal being...”There had been a lot of not-normal in his life that year so far.

“Before the bear,” he clarified.

I scrubbed my eyes again and slowly peeled myself off the mattress.His t-shirt from the night before was still on the floor.I picked it up and pulled it on.“What were your days like before the bear, then?So I can be prepared.”

“Usually, I went to bed early.Last night was an exception; I like to be asleep by eleven.”

I counted off the hours in my head.“You only sleep six-and-a-half hours a night?”

“Only?”He scoffed.“It’s all I need.”

I’d had no idea that Matt was such a morning person.Or a not-sleeping person.What the hell had I gotten myself into?

“To be clear, you do not expect me to get up this early every day, right?”Because that was going to be one of those limits he would need to respect.

“No.I get up this early to work out.”He grimaced.“Okay, these days, it’s for physical therapy.But that’s a workout in and of itself.”

“Physical therapy?For your leg?”I had no idea he was still trying to fix it.I thought the cane was a part of his life, now.

He sat on his side of the bed and opened the nightstand drawer.There was a distinct rattle of pill bottles as he pulled them out.“My hope is that within a couple of years, I’ll be back to my old self.But that’s going to take a lot of work, considering the damage to my muscles from that blood clot.”

He popped the tops off the bottles and counted out what he needed, while I watched like I was intruding on a sacred ritual.

“I didn’t realize you took so many pills.”I didn’t know why I said it; it made it sound like I thought it was a bad thing.

He must have worried about that perception as well, because he responded, “I kept it to myself.But now that you live with me, I don’t see why I should sneak around.”

“Now that I...”I guessed I never thought of what we were doing as serious cohabitation.I came back to New York, but it never occurred to me to call this what it was: we were moving in together.

He glanced over his shoulder.“Were you planning on getting your own place?Because I can do that for you, if it’s what you need.”

“No.No, I want to move in with you.”That shocked the hell out of me.