Faking with Benefits : A Friends to Lovers Romance(56)

“There’s no right answer here, L. What do you need?” He brushes my hair away from my face.

“I… I don’t know.” Frustration knots my stomach.

“Check in with yourself,” he says patiently.

I obediently dig inside myself, trying to untangle the threads of fear and happiness and anxiety and stress. The answer rises to the surface of my mind.

“You,” I say. “I need you. Here. Now. Yes.” His chest shakes with silent laughter, and I huff. “Yes. Stay. Please. And stop laughing at me.”

“You’re pretty cute.”

My heart glows in my chest. I kick his ankle under the sheets. “I’m not cute. I’m terrifying.”

“Mmhm.” He wraps his arms tighter around me and pulls me flush against him, so we’re spooning.

I wriggle against him angrily. “I make men jump from windows and flee from restaurants to get away from me.”

His eyes glow almost luminescent in my low bedroom light. “I’m not fleeing.”

“Yet.”

“Mm.” He starts carding a hand through my hair, and the sensation is so relaxing I feel my eyes starting to fall shut. “Sleep,” he murmurs, so low I barely even hear it. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”





THIRTY-FIVE





ZACK





“Will you please just tell me what’s wrong?” I ask the next morning, trailing after Luke as he marches across the road to our apartment building.

It’s seven in the morning. In a perfect world, I wouldn’t be awake for another three hours, but Luke banged on my bedroom door thirty minutes ago and demanded that I come with him to buy Layla breakfast. It’s a mild day—the sky is bright and grey, and the air is nippy, but Luke doesn’t seem to notice the cold, walking like a zombie to the zebra crossing. He’s clutching a paper bag full of food.

It’s not the first time all four of us have ordered breakfast together, but we normally just hit the local chain cafe. For some reason, though, today he insisted on going to some fancy little boulangerie he knows Layla likes. He’s bought croissants, pain au chocolat, fresh bread—even macarons. For breakfast. I was too tired to argue.

We reach a crossing, and I study his face. His body is tight and thrumming with tension, but his shoulders are slumped with tiredness. He looks exhausted. “Seriously,” I say. “What’s wrong, man?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he says flatly.

“You’ve looked like crap ever since you got back from the pub yesterday. What happened?”

Josh and I had been working on Layla’s lesson plan late last night when Luke called. He’d sounded almost frantic on the phone. Said that he’d taken Layla out for a drink, and pretty much begged Josh to pick her up and drive her home. I’m still kinda offended he didn’t ask me. “Why did you send Josh to pick her up?” I prod. “Did you and Layla fight?”

He grunts.

“You’re my business partner,” I try. “You’re meant to tell me stuff.”

Nothing. The traffic lights flash, and we cross the road, heading back towards our building.

“If you ain’t gonna tell me, I’ll just start guessin’,” I say, as we beep our keycards and the doors to the lobby open. “Were you on a date? Did she turn you down, or something?”

“No.”

“Did you turn her down? Oh, mate, please tell me you didn’t reject her because you think teaching her how to read Holes a literal decade ago means you’re like, morally forbidden to touch her knee, or whatever. You ain’t her teacher anymore.”

“It’s not that,” he says woodenly, stabbing the button for the lift. The doors slide open and we both step inside.

“Then what—”

He sighs. “When we were at the pub, she bumped into an old classmate. He said some pretty disgusting things about her.”

My hackles rise. “Like what?”

“Ask her yourself. That’s as much as you’re getting out of me.” The lift dings as we reach our floor.

“Okay,” I say, as we step out into the hallway. “If some guy harassed her, why do you look like you want to chuck yourself off a bridge?”

Luke stays silent, and I sigh, finally giving up. We reach Layla’s door, and I unlock it, pushing into the flat and heading straight for the bedroom.

“Where are you going?” Luke asks, stepping inside and locking the flat door behind him. “Her bedroom?”

“It’s seven in the bloody morning, so that’s probably where she’s gonna be, yeah.”

He looks horrified. “You can’t just go into her room!”

“Why not? She practically lives in mine. And Josh is in there.” I frown. “Why did you ask Josh and not me to pick her up, anyway?”

“She was… upset,” he says slowly. “I knew Josh would give her what she needed.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“She didn’t want to be coddled, Zack. And you would’ve tried to sleep with her.”

I stop walking, staring at him. “You actually think that, don’t you?” I say slowly. “God, you’re a prick sometimes.”