Life's Too Short (The Friend Zone #3)(70)

The corners of my lips fell.

Grace.

The best possible scenario was that Annabel would get clean and take her daughter back. Then I could still see her. And with Annabel heading to rehab, the chances of that were good.

It was the other thing that bothered me. The reason Vanessa couldn’t adopt Grace herself.

She’d be going back to work soon.

In fact, the sooner Grace was gone, the sooner Vanessa would be too. And I didn’t like what that would look like. On any level.

Vanessa was usually gone so much she didn’t even keep a place here. All her stuff had been in a storage unit for the last two years. She’d rented an apartment because she’d planned to be home for a few months to help her sister with the baby. Then she’d ended up with Grace altogether and got stuck here. But when that was over…how did I—us—fit into that?

I didn’t fly. And even if I did, I couldn’t leave work for weeks at a time to travel the world with her. And she couldn’t stay here and make videos. Not in the long-term. She was already clutching at straws trying to come up with content as it was…

But I was trying not to look at the sun.

Annabel was months away from completing her ninety-day program. After that she’d move into sober living. She wouldn’t be able to have Grace there. That meant Vanessa was still months away from leaving. We had some time to figure it all out.

Vanessa stirred, and I smiled down at her. She peered up at me sleepily. “Where are you going?” she asked, rubbing her eyes.

“I have to go to work.”

She put her lip into a pout. “Awwww. Stay with me.”

“I can’t.” I smiled, knotting my tie. “I changed Grace and gave her a bottle. I gave Harry his meds and put some wet food down. Satan has been fed.”

She laughed. She threw the blankets off her and stretched like a cat.

She was naked.

My hands froze on my tie.

She looked at me over her shoulder and gave me a mischievous grin—and then grabbed her T-shirt, pulled it over her head, and went to the bathroom to brush her teeth. When she came out, she started jumping into her pajama pants.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

She shrugged. “You’re leaving. I have to go home.” She climbed onto the mattress and stood on her knees on the edge of my bed and wrapped her arms around me, squeezing my waist.

“You’re not going home.” I smiled. “I don’t ever want you to go home. In fact, I think we should cut a door between our apartments. Use yours as a closet.”

She laughed and smiled up at me with her chin on my chest. “So I get to stay here while you go to work?”

“I’ll give you a key.”

“I’m gonna snoop through your medicine cabinet.”

“Let me know if anything’s expired.”

She grinned. “So, what? Does this mean I’m your girlfriend now?” She bit her bottom lip and bounced her eyebrows.

I smoothed the hair down on the top of her head and looked at her seriously. “That title doesn’t even feel worthy of what this is.”

And I meant it. It didn’t. It felt wildly inadequate.

She beamed up at me. “Hey, since we’re exclusive now, we can stop using condoms if you want. But we both have to get STD testing first,” she said, looking at me sternly.

“Okay.” It wasn’t a bad idea. I always used protection, but you could never be too safe. “But what about birth control?”

She shrugged. “My tubes are tied.”

I jerked my face back. “What? Why?”

“Because I don’t ever want to accidentally get pregnant and pass down my shitty genes.”

I snorted. “Okay…”

Her smile fell a little. “Does that bother you?”

I shook my head. “No. Not really. There’s more than one way to have kids if you want them. And I’m good either way if you do or you don’t. It’s just that it’s such a permanent procedure.”

“Well, I needed a permanent solution. Took forever to find a doctor to do it. Heaven forbid a woman in her twenties knows what she wants to do with her fallopian tubes.” She nipped at my bottom lip. “I got you a Christmas present,” she whispered against my mouth.

I made a dismissive noise in the back of my throat and went to kiss her again, but she shook her head and draped her arms around my neck. “I have to give it to you now so you can think about it.”

I smiled. “Okay. Give it to me now, then.”

She bit her lip and beamed up at me. “I got us into Badger Den.”

I pulled my face back and grinned at her. “You did? When?”

“Tomorrow.”

Ahhhhhhh. Fuck.

“I know what you’re gonna say, and I already have a plan.”

I shook my head. “I can’t fly. You know that.” And Lord knows I couldn’t afford to miss any more work.

“I know you think you can’t fly. But hear me out,” she said. “I put a lot of thought into this. We have dinner at the airport tonight. We get there three hours before our flight. There’s a place I love to eat in the terminal and we can get nice and sloshed and watch the planes on the tarmac like a little dose of immersion therapy. It’s only a three-hour flight and I got us first-class tickets. We’ll be in our seats with drinks in our hands and plenty of time to get comfortable and used to the plane before it even taxis from the gate. I downloaded season five of The Office to watch while we’re in the air and I had Yoga Lady make you a lavender-and-eucalyptus essential oil roller for your anxiety. And then, when we get there, we’re staying in an amazing five-star hotel on the beach and having dinner at Badger Den. It’s the ultimate motivation to overcome your fear.”