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Holt

Ziggy didn’t yell.

I was positive she’d yell, but she didn’t.

Instead, she melted in front of my eyes, all because of the goofball sign that I said I needed to make but didn’t think my friends would take me seriously about.

How the fuck am I going to live with a woman in my house who gets more irresistible by the minute when she’s completely and irrevocably off-limits?

Especially when I know she feels this thing between us too?

I liked you .

She said it like she doesn’t anymore, as if she could just turn off liking someone because she found out it was a bad idea, but if she didn’t like me anymore, she wouldn’t have been so upset.

Fuck, this is hard .

Dinner is awkward. She takes hers onto the porch and turns on one of her language podcasts while I sit in the kitchen.

I skip sitting with her to watch TV because I say I need to get a little extra rest.

Not that I want to be in my room.

Anything has to be better than stripping down to my boxers, flopping down into my bed, not tired enough to sleep, ordering myself not to rub one out to fantasies about my team’s owner’s daughter.

Again.

Anymore.

Fuck knows I’ve done it enough already. Mostly in Spain, when I’d get a text from her, picture those pretty blue eyes and the way she made friends with Jessica, and then let my mind wander to far more explicit situations that never happened.

And will never happen.

And that was before she told me about her cherry hand pies.

Cherry.

Hand.

Pies.

There’s not a word in that pastry’s name that doesn’t make me hard as granite.

You’re so fucked , Caden says cheerfully in my head.

He would’ve laughed his ass off.

And then he would’ve helped me come up with a plan to fix this.

My door is ajar, so I hear her moving around downstairs, letting Jessica outside.

She sings along to a Waverly Sweet album while she does the dishes, turning the kitchen faucet on and off, clinking plates and silverware into the dishwasher, and then I hear her practicing her language app again.

Spanish and Italian. She speaks both. Better Spanish, but her Italian greatly improved while she was working on the cruise ship, she told me when I asked what she was listening to one morning this week.

And it made me feel, once again, like she was out of my league, except then she made me buckwheat pancakes in the shape of smiley faces that were also phallic if you looked at them wrong, and we both laughed until she was crying.

Fuck , I miss that Ziggy.

The Ziggy who wasn’t Roland Keating’s daughter.

The Ziggy I was going to take on a date tomorrow.

The Ziggy I get to see cradling her small baby bump when she doesn’t realize I’m watching.

I stare at the cracks in the ceiling as the sun sets, wondering if she’ll watch TV or if she’ll come up to get ready for bed.

Long day.

Hard day.

For both of us.

“C’mon, Jessica. Bedtime.”

My pulse ticks higher.

She’s coming.

She’s coming up the stairs with the dog to get ready for bed.

She’ll be stripping down and changing into pajamas in mere minutes.

Naked across the hall.

Is my air conditioner broken ?

Christ on a radiator, it’s hot in here.

Jessica’s nails click-clack on the steps. Need to get those trimmed.

“Somebody’s a good girl who needs her claws trimmed,” Ziggy murmurs softly.

If I said that to the dog, she’d blow snot all over me. But when Ziggy says it, all I hear is panting.

And the sound of my heart beating faster.

We’re thinking the same things.

We have a vibe.

She’s special.

And I can’t fucking have her.

I want to flop on my side, but I can’t flop and also keep my foot elevated, so instead, I shove a pillow over my head.

But I can still hear her.

I hear the door across the hall creak as she enters the room.

I hear Jessica snuffling a happy noise, and it’s easy to picture Ziggy petting her.

I hear a drawer open.

My balls tighten harder.

She’s probably taking her clothes off.

Quit being a creeper. Stop it .

Nope.

Still imagining Ziggy unbuttoning the bright pink and yellow shirt she wore to work today.

I wonder if her bra is plain or if she’s hiding lace under her shirt. If it’s pink too, or beige, or if she’s secretly got lacy black or red lingerie under her clothes.

If her belly swelling with the baby is more noticeable in ways you can only see when she’s undressed .

If she has any birthmarks.

Stop stop STOP .

I can’t do this.

She’s my boss’s daughter, and I already feel like the world’s biggest fuck-up for coming back to the Pounders injured.

I can’t live with an obsession with the big boss’s daughter while she’s sleeping across the hall from me every night too.

I have to go.

I have to find a different place to live.

Say it was my preference.

The stair thing. There was a good reason about stairs.

I forget what it was, but I had it.

Her door is ajar too.

It has to be.

How else am I hearing the water turn on in the bathroom this loudly?

Oh, fuck.

Is she showering?

Is she completely naked?

Am I fucking fifteen years old again? What the fuck is wrong with me?

I squash the pillow harder over my face, trying to suffocate myself.

Or stop the noises.

I liked you .

I like you too, Ziggy Barnes.

Entirely too much.

Cherry hand pies.

I. Have. To. Move.

Tomorrow.

First thing .

I’m getting up, I’m packing, and I’m?—

“ Aaahhhhh! ”

Ziggy.

Something’s wrong with Ziggy.

I don’t pause. Don’t think. I just leap.

Ziggy needs me.