Page 99 of The One Month Boyfriend (Wildwood Society)

Silas

We’ve barely gotten backinto the room later that night when the shouting starts next door, loud enough to cut Kat off mid-sentence, for us to both glance at the wall besides the bed.

“Yikes,” she says. “I thought old buildings were supposed to have thicker—”

Then she stops and frowns, still staring at the wall, and I remember something.

“Meckler and his girlfriend are next door,” I say, leaning back against the dresser, my hands in my pockets. “I ran into him coming back from the gym this morning. Forgot to mention it.”

The lie comes out casually as anything, and Kat doesn’t seem to notice. I didn’t forget. I couldn’t forget that even when we came back here and fell asleep across the bed from each other, he’d be haunting me. That he’d been haunting me this morning, when I woke up, stretched across her even if I didn’t know it yet.

I wanted to forget because today was… good. Great, maybe. My life is pretty good these days but today felt like walking on sunbeams and relaxing on clouds, like I was in an untouchable bubble with Kat who stroked my hair while I dozed off by the pool.

All I had to do was ignore how sometimes her eyes would dart away from me, like she was looking to see if someone else was there. The way she kissed me on the balcony and then wanted to know where he was.

So, no, I didn’t mention that Meckler is next door to us because I wanted to think about him as little as possible.

“Olivia,” Kat supplies, her eyes still on the wall. “The girlfriend is Olivia.”

She’s perfectly still, her floor-length dress barely rippling with remembered movement, eyes narrowed behind her glasses.

I don’t want to know the girlfriend’s name, either. I don’t even want to know his. He doesn’t deserve anything but a tossed-off designation: ex-fiancé.

“Sure,” I say instead as another raised voice floats through the wall.

Kat looks at me, raises one eyebrow, and then heads into the bathroom. When she comes back a second later, she’s got a glass in her hand, and she holds it up to the wall, her ear to the open end.

“That’s not how you eavesdrop,” I point out, voice low.

“Sure it is.”

I settle on the side of the bed, leaning back on my hands, a few feet away from where she’s standing.

“It goes the other way. The sound travels through the glass.”

Kat shoots me a skeptical look, but flips the glass around. I sit back and watch her, eyes unfocused on the middle distance, listening.

I swear I can still taste the cherry. I swear I can still taste her and the sensation’s got me halfway hard, even as we hear the raised voices from next door. Even as she stands here with me and listens to them.

I want to touch her. I want to pull her to me. I want to hold her until I leave finger marks on her skin and I want to kiss the bruises in the morning. I want her to bite me and leave teeth marks.

For the first time in so long I want, and I’m dizzy with it.

“They fucking?” I ask, my mind single-track.

“I hope not,” she says dryly.

I raise one eyebrow. I could probably make out some of the words if I cared to, but I don’t.

“I think they’re fighting about work,” she goes on, after a moment. “They sound pretty drunk.”

“Should we worry?”

“I don’t think so.”

Then she looks right at me, one eyebrow raised, and now she looks amused.

“She’s pissed that he’s sharing an office with his ex,” she says, and even in the low light of the bedside lamps, I can tell that all the skin I can see has flushed bright pink, even pinker than she was a minute ago and I want to push my face into her neck, feel that pretty heat all over me.