Effortless (Thoughtless, #2)(19)

Rolling my eyes, even though a part of me was considering it, I shoved his shoulders off me. He laughed genuinely, finally removing himself and slinking to my side. “I was just being practical,” he murmured, nestling into my body and kissing my shoulder.

His eyes closed as peace washed over his face. Sighing, I kissed his forehead, making his smile widen. Curling into him, I thought of his face before that little romp. What he’d done to block out the memory had been pretty spectacular, but now that it was over, I was thinking about it again. I hoped he wasn’t thinking about it anymore. I didn’t really want to bring it up, but I did want to make sure that he was okay.

“Are you alright?” I asked, running my hands up his chest.

He made a deep, satisfied noise in his throat. “Completely,” he murmured, his smile a charmingly crooked one. I smacked his shoulder and he peeked an eye open. Seeing that my face was serious, his smile faded.

His finger came out to tuck a damp lock behind my ear. “I’m fine, Kiera,” he said, his tone more subdued.

I nodded, burying my head into his shoulder as he put his arm around me.

I kept a close watch on him for the next few nights, but he slept soundly from what I could tell. Only the normal nighttime adjustments that we all made during sleep, not the restless thrashing that came from nightmares. I didn’t stay with him every night, but more often than not I fell asleep by his side.

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It was comforting for me, having him touching my body as I drifted into dreamland, but I think it was even more of a comfort for him. He would pop into my apartment on nights that he stayed out late, really late, playing other clubs and bars around the Seattle area. He said he didn’t like slipping into a cold bed. Well, okay, the way he’d phrased it was, “If I’m going to slip into a bed in the early hours of the morning, I want it to be warmed up by your hot little naked body.” I didn’t actually sleep naked. Not unless he was there to put me to bed that way. Wearing pajamas was a habit that he was constantly trying to get me to break, telling me, “Why do you need clothes if I’m just going to rip them off?” But the gist of his comment was that he wanted to be warm with me, not cold and alone by himself.

But after a few weeks of watching him closely as he cuddled next to me, I stopped worrying about the dreams that sometimes plagued him.

Instead, I started worrying about my upcoming reentry into higher learning. My schedule this year was the toughest, and I knew I was going to be studying nearly every waking moment I had. While I was one of those weird people that thrived on the challenge of school, I wasn’t looking forward to so much of my free time being absorbed with it. But Kellan was patient, and a pretty good study buddy—when he wasn’t trying to distract me with sex—and free for the bulk of the day since he

“worked” nights, so I knew I’d still get to spend a lot of time with him.

But I meant what I said when I’d told him that I felt more well-rounded living with my sister, and I tried to hang out with other people besides my boyfriend. In fact, Jenny had decided that she wanted to try her hand at art, and had cajoled Kate and me into taking a class with her. We went every Monday and Wednesday morning, usually stopping for espressos afterwards.

The Monday before my school started up again was my last class. If I’d been getting graded on this course, well…I’d have received my first “F” ever.

“Well, Miss Allen, it’s a very nice use of…color.” The kind, older woman who taught the course out of her home, used to teach art at one of the local high schools. She patted me on the back, 54



her lips in a tight smile, as she complimented me on the only positive thing that she could say about my elementary level bowl of tropical fruit.

While I’d been working on the thing for three weeks, it looked like something a six-year-old had drawn and colored in one afternoon. Artist, I was not.

As the teacher walked over to commend Kate on her perfectly proportioned apples, I wondered if the retired school teacher had been around when Kellan was in school. Then I wondered if she’d been at his school.

Maybe he’d taken her class. Maybe she’d been his teacher, complimenting him on his study of the female form. Instantly I started to think that maybe she’d “taught” Kellan in more ways than one; a scowl formed on my lips.

A light laughter broke my train of thought and I looked over at Jenny watching me. “It’s not so bad, Kiera.”

With the end of her pencil, she pointed to my pathetic attempt at realism. “It’s sort of…Picasso-ish.”

I frowned, but then laughed with her. Picasso wasn’t really what I’d been going for, but then again, art was subjective. One man’s garbage was another man’s Monet. Maybe I had a future in it after all. Looking over at Jenny’s drawing, I reconsidered. No, out of all of us, Jenny was the one with a future. She’d passed up fruit bowls ages ago, and was on to drawing people. What she’d created with just a pencil blew my mind.

She’d drawn the band…our band. It was a close-up of them on stage—Griffin and Matt on their guitars, jamming away, Evan beaming with joy behind his drums, and Kellan, singing away on his microphone.

She’d even managed to capture the devilish curl of a smile that Kellan got when he sang. It was breathtaking, and put my sad little bundle of grapes to shame.