Lizzie Blake's Best Mistake (A Brush with Love, #2)(57)

She made a mess of Rake’s recently cleaned floors—their floors—but he didn’t seem to care. He watched the unveiling of every item from the boxes, his eyes lighting up as though they held special meaning for him too, asking questions and laughing at her stories.

“You look so happy,” Rake said. And she was. Little starbursts of happiness sparkled through her as she looked at her memories. Nothing had ever fulfilled her quite like traveling, not even sex. She felt most whole and present and complete somewhere, anywhere, that wasn’t her parents’ house.

And that’s how they spent their night, Lizzie rediscovering small pieces of herself she’d long stored away, and Rake welcoming every single one to their new home, the picture of their little blob baby the center of it all.





Chapter 28




LIZZIE and Rake were starting to find a flow in their cohabitation. They would both wake up early, Lizzie spending the day at the bakery making and shipping out orders for what she called “vulvalicious sweet treats,” while Rake would head to the office, playing catch-up on the team’s first few weeks of work without him.

Dominic was dismissive of most suggestions from Rake and any other team member, saying only traditional campaigns geared at the rich and WASP-y would serve the luxury swimsuit line in their East Coast launch, and trying to persuade Dominic otherwise was the verbal equivalent of stepping on a Lego.

Rake was often forced to stay late at work as they finalized details on their upcoming website rebrand, an important photoshoot, and a big launch party happening in a week. He’d also picked up a handful of freelancing gigs that took up any spare moments, wanting to hoard away every dollar he could before the baby was born.

After sitting at a desk staring at his computer screen for hours on end and suffering through endless meetings that could have been summed up in an email, it still caught Rake off guard to come home to an apartment so bursting with life.

Lizzie was noise and smiles and brightness. She always had the music blasting as she worked in the kitchen, making him sample hot cross buns shaped like plump butts or something she joyfully referred to as “cinna-boobs” the second he walked in the door.

He’d sit at the kitchen counter for hours, listening to her talk and think out loud, sampling her delicious products as often as necessary until he felt sick from all the sugar, and she’d finally collapse on the counter and say her brain bank was empty.

At night, they’d retreat to their separate beds, Lizzie’s air mattress pushed against the wall near his normal bed frame. He felt like shit having her sleep on an air mattress, but no amount of pressing would make her budge on it.

And through all of it, Rake had the indecent urge to touch her. Hold her. Brush off the constant smears of flour on her nose. Breathe in the scent of her delicate sweetness edged with something tart and delicious until he was delirious from it.

Lizzie’s energy tugged at him like the moon pulls the tide, and there were countless moments when he wanted to give in to the current.

And he couldn’t, for the life of him, figure out what the bloody hell was wrong with him.

He wasn’t this poetic, feelings-type person.

And he certainly wasn’t about to give in to such a foolish impulse and screw up their agreed-upon plan.

No. He’d ball his fists at his sides every time she walked past. He’d keep his head down and eyes slammed shut when she pranced out of the bathroom in nothing but a towel. And, he’d (eventually) figure out how to shut off the lobe of his brain that generated constant daydreams of Lizzie Marie Blake.

Besides his dizzyingly intrusive thoughts, everything was fine. Incredibly fine.

One night a couple weeks into their cohabitation, Rake woke up needing to pee. He blinked at the ceiling for a moment before letting out a gruff yawn, then rolled out of bed, stumbling through the dark toward the bathroom.

But, in a moment that caused his life to pass before his eyes, his toe caught on something at the corner of his mattress.

And he went down.

Hard.

Whatever he’d tripped over was tall and rubbery and collapsed beneath him.

His sleep-logged limbs didn’t balance him, and his mind moved in slow motion as he fell, registering that it was Lizzie’s air mattress by the time he was halfway down on it.

“Oh, fuck,” he groaned, his knees smacking the floor beneath.

Lizzie screamed as she woke, her body jerking up from the collapse of the air mattress, and her knees hitting him squarely in the chest.

“What the hell?” Lizzie said with a hoarse yell, continuing to kick and twist. Rake groaned again, the wind knocked from his lungs.

He rolled to his back, groping around for one of her legs so she’d stop kicking the life out of him. “Lizzie,” he wheezed, “it’s me.”

Lizzie stilled for a moment, the hiss of her rapidly deflating mattress the only sound in the room. “What are you doing on my air mattress?”

“I had to pee,” he said, sucking in a breath.

“You what?”

“Pee! I had to pee!”

“Why were you trying to pee on my air mattress?”

“I wasn’t! I tripped over this ridiculous thing,” he said, slapping the thick rubber.

“I think you popped it,” Lizzie said after a moment.

“You think?” Rake said, the whistle of escaping air emphasizing his sarcasm.