Stripped Bare (Stripped #1)(71)

I hadn’t needed my panties. Or clothes. Or anything at all, really. He had been very right. I didn’t know two people could have sex as many times as we had last night.

He was very determined to convince me once and for all.

I was still apprehensive. If he was too, he was hiding it well. Maybe he had more confidence in the art of relationships than I did. In fact, that was a given. Everybody had more confidence in the art of relationships than I did.

Especially one that would ultimately prove to be a little long distance.

My doubts were exactly why I was sitting at West’s kitchen table while he slept, in my underwear, with one his shirts as a robe. His shirts were super soft and comfy. Massive, yes, but it only seemed to add to the comfort factor.

I’d Googled just about everything I could. It was a short flight, but who wanted to deal with the never-ending crap of airports on a regular basis? And a five-hour drive—that was insane if it was a regular thing. Hell, I didn’t like driving farther than L.A. for a weekend break.

Would he do that? He was busy. He might have had time for me, but for traveling? That was a whole lot of extra time that was needed. Hours extra.

That was a lot. It would add up. And lord forbid if the relationship got super serious... Who would move where? Who’d live where? Who’d do what?

I buried my face in my hands. This—this was when all the f*ck-ups happened. The anxiety about the seriousness of relationships. Almost every time I’d gotten anxious in a relationship was when it’d gone wrong. Maybe I was asking for it. Maybe it was coincidence. Maybe I knew that it was going wrong and that was why it went wrong.

Or maybe all of those bad experiences had turned me into the one thing I’d never thought I was: a commitment-phobe.

Oh my god.

Was I a commitment-phobe? I felt like one. Even after we’d spilled out our feelings to each other and spent the entire night talking and having sex, I was still trying to figure out all the ways this could go wrong, which gave me all the reasons for not doing this.

I had a ton of reasons why this was a bad idea.

I had only one reason why it should continue: I wanted it to.

I had no idea if it would be enough. I guessed it would have to be enough.

I opened a new tab on my Internet browser and clicked on the search bar. Commitment-phobe, I typed, hitting the Enter key after. Every result was an article by this expert or that journalist, and after clicking through three pages and finding nothing other than magazine or website articles a la “10 Signs You’re A Commitment-Phobe,” I went back to page one.

The first article had to be better than the others.

It wasn’t. Too much professional jargon. Thankfully, the second one down gave me the eight top signs of being a commitment-phobe. Apparently, I fit a great deal of them, but I still had doubts.

Jesus. Now, I was doubting my doubt.

I needed to get off the Internet.

“What are you doing?” West appeared behind me as if by magic and looked over my shoulder, his hands resting on the back of the chair. “‘The Top Eight Signs You’re A Commitment-Phobe,’” he read off the screen. “That would explain a lot.”

I turned and smacked my hand against his forearm before he moved away. “I’m wondering if I am. It would make a lot of sense why I just spent forever Googling easy ways to travel between San Diego and Las Vegas before deciding it was all far too time consuming and not worth the hassle.”

“And you did all of this while wearing one of my shirts.”

I shrugged. “It’s comfy.”

“It’s sexy—that’s what it is.”

“Funny. I feel the same way about you when you wear them.”

West grinned and, with his finger hooked beneath my chin, tilted my face up to his. “Good morning, angel.” Then he kissed me softly, letting his lips linger over mine for a minute.

I sighed when he let me go. It really wasn’t fair that he was so handsome and could half turn me on with just a simple good-morning kiss.

“Morning.”

“And back to your freak-out...” he said, pulling a mug down out of a cupboard, his back to me. He was wearing nothing but tight, black boxer briefs, and I had to admit that I was enjoying the morning view. “The flight is ninety minutes, if that. An hour at the airport before. Ten minutes to get out. Less than three hours each way. It’s not as bad as you think it is.”

I wrinkled my face up even though he couldn’t see me unless he’d suddenly developed eyes in the back of his head. “But that’s a lot for a weekend. And what about weekends we can’t see each other because of work? You own clubs. You’re not always going to be able to get away. Sometimes, most of my work has to be done on a weekend.”

“You’re panicking.”

“Yes. Yes, I am.”

West put his mug down and turned. The kitchen was big, but not so big that it took him more than four or five steps to get across it to where I was at the table. He flattened one hand on it and leaned forward, shutting my laptop with the other. My lips pursed as he pulled the computer away from me and kept his hand on top of it.

“It’s something we might have to figure out as we go. We both have flexible jobs and set our own schedules for the most part—it doesn’t have to be a weekend.”

“But what if—”