People judged, no matter what, and if anyone found out that she’d slept with me while still married to Joey, I knew they’d label her as a slut. Jesus, Joey could even use it against her if the divorce turned nasty, which I was sure it could. I couldn’t risk her losing Amelia because of me.
I had to remain her secret—for now.
“Caley,” I whispered as I nudged her, “wake up.”
She groaned, but her eyes stayed firmly shut. I nudged her again, harder this time, and repeated her name. Her eyelids fluttered open but just barely.
“What?” she mumbled, her voice hoarse from sleep.
“You have to wake up. You stayed the night here,” I answered.
It took a moment for my words to register.
Suddenly, she bolted upright in the bed and looked around. “Shit!”
“What? What’s wrong?” I asked, alarmed.
“I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I was going to go back to my parents’ place.” She looked down and saw our naked bodies tangled together in the sheets. Her face turned crimson. “Holy hell, that wasn’t a dream either.”
I grinned. “Definitely not.”
She fell back down, her head hitting the pillow. “I’m not even sure what to say.” She glanced over at me, her face still bright red. “I’ve never been involved in a morning-after situation before.”
“This definitely isn’t a normal morning-after moment, Caley. For one, I’m not planning on kicking you out of my bed and never speaking or laying eyes on you again. We’re much more than that. Surely, you’ve figured that out by now.”
She looked away, but I’d seen that her face was troubled.
“What we did last night, it—”
I cut her off, “Don’t even say it. Whatever thoughts are running through that mind of yours, you have to realize it wasn’t a mistake.”
She turned back toward me with an angry look on her face. “I wasn’t going to say it was a mistake, asshat. I was going to say that it was the best night of my life, but then you had to go and ruin my speech.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling like an idiot.
“Yeah, oh.” She sighed. “Why did you wake me up so early?”
“I thought you might need to leave.” I held up my hands in surrender, not wanting her to take that the wrong way. “Not that I want you to leave. I just wasn’t sure if you had somewhere you needed to be.”
She shook her head. “My mom will demand to know where I’ve been when I get home, I’m sure, so I think I’ll avoid going back there until later today when Joey brings Amelia back. My day is completely free.”
I grinned. “So, what would you like to do today then?”
“Honestly? I think I’d like to sleep for a few more hours.” She smiled at me. “Here, in this bed with you. I’m not ready to face the big, bad world again just yet.”
My grin widened. “I think that’s doable.”
I pulled her closer to me and wrapped my arms around her naked waist. We lay there together, tight against each other.
For a moment, I let myself imagine that this was our life instead of something we had to hide from everyone. I imagined waking up every goddamn morning with my arm wrapped around Caley. She would be the first person I saw every single day for the rest of my life. To me, that sounded like pure fucking heaven.
Neither of us was rich. In fact, we were pretty much both borderline dirt poor. Most people would have looked at the life I imagined and scoffed. I knew we’d never have an amazing life filled with the finer things. We’d never have brand-new cars or a huge house.
And I was okay with that because I would have Caley…and Amelia. That would be far better than anything else I could imagine. Time would give me exactly what I wanted. All I needed to do was be patient.
We didn’t crawl out of bed until well into the afternoon after I’d finally convinced myself that I couldn’t sleep any longer. Feeling positively disgusting, I asked Ethan if I could take a shower. He let me borrow a shirt of his along with a pair of boxers, and then he sent me into the bathroom while he threw my clothes in the washer for me.
I took my time in his shower, trying to come to terms with what had happened last night. I’d had sex with Ethan. It had been mind-blowing sex, the best I’d ever had. He’d made me feel like the most beautiful woman on this planet. I was ashamed of what pregnancy had done to my body, but he’d pushed my worries aside, like they were nothing.
He’d taken the time to show me that I was sexy in his eyes. Plain old Caley was sexy and cherished.
The warm feeling from last night hadn’t left me. I felt as if I was practically glowing with happiness. For the first time that I could remember, I didn’t despise my body. My stretch marks no longer felt like they had neon signs and flashing lights around them, making them stand out even more than they already did.
In one night, Ethan had helped me learn to love myself just a little bit.
Once I finished with my shower, I climbed out and dried off. I dressed in my borrowed clothes and ran one of Ethan’s combs through my hair to get the tangles out. Once I felt human again, I left the bathroom and headed back into the bedroom.
Ethan was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at his phone with a frown. I stepped closer, curious to see what was wrong.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
He turned to look at me as he slid his phone into his pocket. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“What was up with your phone?” When he gave me a questioning look, I explained, “I saw you frowning when you were reading something.”
He shrugged. “Danielle texted me.”
My mouth popped open in shock. With everything going on, I’d completely forgotten about the girl who had set all of this in motion.
“I forgot about her,” I admitted. “Bad time to ask, but have you ended things with her?”
He rolled his eyes. “No, I’m still taking her on dates while sleeping with you.”
“I had to ask,” I said, ignoring his sarcastic tone.
“I wouldn’t do that to you,” he said simply.
“What did you tell her?” I asked. “When you ended things, I mean.”
“There really wasn’t much to end. I just told her that I wasn’t feeling it, so I thought it would be best if we went our separate ways.”
“I’m sure that went over really well,” I muttered, feeling slightly guilty over the fact that Danielle had gotten the short end of the stick because of me.
“She was…upset,” he said, his tone making it clear that upset was an understatement.
“Will she be a problem for you?”
He shook his head. “Nah. She texted me to see if we could hang out as friends, but I told her no. She didn’t have a meltdown.”
“Good,” I said, relieved. “We don’t need to add more tension to our already precarious situation.”
“It’ll be fine,” he assured me.
“I keep telling myself that. Maybe if I say it enough times, it’ll come true,” I joked.
He stood. “I’m starving, and I’m sure you are, too. Food is pretty much nonexistent in this house, but we could go grab something in town, if that’s okay with you.”
Go out—as in, be around other people who might recognize us. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” I said.
“We’ll be fine, Caley. We’ll go to the diner down on the end of town. It’s usually not busy,” he said, trying to persuade me. “If you see anyone you know, we can leave.”