I channel surf for five minutes. I play a little Madden, but it isn’t as fun beating the machine. My mouth barely even twitches. Bored, I toss the remote onto the trunk, then I head to my room, grab the sketchpad I keep in in the nightstand drawer, and sit down on the bed with it.

I’ve always liked to draw. It’s something I do for fun, and CJ knows this. He’s seen me sketching while we sit on the couch together. It’s how I occupy my time if he’s watching something I’m not all that interested in. He’s seen a few of the sketches I’ve completed.

He just hasn’t seen what I’ve been drawing as of late.

I flip through the pages I’ve already filled, coming to my most recent pencil drawing of CJ, and give him more shadow on his jaw. I darken the outline of his t-shirt and sketch one of those coconut drinks in his hand. The ones with the umbrella straws sticking out of them. As I’m smudging in his jeans, I hear the front door open, lifting my head from my drawing and stilling my hand.

I close the sketchpad and push it aside to scramble off the bed, getting to my feet just as CJ takes the last remaining steps down the hallway to get to my room. He stops at the doorway, filling it, looking from my face to my bare feet curling against the hardwood, and back up again.

He’s wearing a dark blue t-shirt and jeans that form to his strong thighs and I’m certain look amazing on his ass. I just don’t think now is the best time to ask him for a view of it.

I open my mouth to say something, hey or I’m sorry if I’ve made this weird, but CJ beats me to it.

“How are you feeling?” he asks me.

“Better than yesterday.” I give him a small smile. “Way better. I haven’t thrown up any.”

“Do you want to do this now, or do you want to eat first?”

His face is serious. And I know this man. I know if I say I want to eat first, no matter how badly he wants this talk to happen, CJ will sit beside me and let me eat every drop of the cream of crab soup he brought home before he utters a single word. He’ll be fine.

But I won’t be able to eat. I want this talk to happen just as bad as he does.

“Do this now, I guess.” I lift my shoulder and gesture for him to come in. “Uh, here, or, do you want to go to the couch? I don’t care.”

“We might as well do it here,” he says, but he keeps where he is, leaning his thick shoulder against the doorframe, crossing his booted foot over the other, and bringing his arms across his chest. “If this goes the way I’m hoping, this is where we’re going to end up,” he adds.

My brows raise. This is where we’re going to end up? What in the world?

“Did you think about it?” CJ asks before I can get my own question out.

“Think about what?”

His mouth twitches. “If you meant what you were offering Friday night. Do you still want me to take it?”

I blink. Take it?

“What?” I whisper.

Take what? Good God. How hard did I flirt?

CJ holds my eyes for a breath, then he shakes his head and drops it. “Christ. You don’t remember shit, do you?” He looks at me again. “You have no fucking clue what I’m talking about.”

“I remember some shit,” I tell him. “Just . . . not all the details.”

“You asked me to take you to bed, darlin’.”

My eyes widen. Oh my God, I flirted so hard.

“I didn’t, considering how drunk you were and how close to being shit-faced I was,” CJ continues. “Even though you told me it wasn’t the tequila. Promised me it wasn’t. Didn’t matter. I needed to hear that sober, babe. You know? I couldn’t risk you not meaning what you were saying to me.”

I think back to that night—CJ standing in this room, hovering over my bed. Face tense.

Oh, my God . . .

He wasn’t angry. He was struggling.

“You didn’t want to leave me, did you?” I throw out, risking being wrong about this but suddenly not caring. I have to know. “You wanted what I wanted.”

A slow moving smirk twists across his mouth, from one perfect corner to the other. “Fuck no, I didn’t want to leave,” he reveals. “I came back and tested that lock three times. I almost broke the goddamn door down.”

My lungs seem to squeeze all of the air out of my body. “I thought you just wanted to stay friends,” I say. “All day today, that’s what I’ve thought. I didn’t—”

“Fuck being friends. I want you.”

Something must flash in my eyes, because CJ rights his head, his gaze hot and hungry all of a sudden as he stares across the distance between us, then immediately he’s pushing off from the wall and stalking toward me.

“Do you want this?” he asks.

I swallow down a moan. God, is this really happening? “Yes,” I answer, nodding my head.

“Do you want me, babe? The way I’m wanting to give you me?” CJ stops when we’re toe-to-toe, curls his fingers under my chin and lifts it. “Do you wanna be my woman?” he murmurs.

My bones turn to jelly, and I whimper because being his woman sounds like the best thing in the entire world to me. Better than being any other man’s anything. “Can I tell you a secret?” I request, running my hands up his body and stopping at his chest.

I can feel his heart pounding. I wonder if he can tell how fast he makes mine beat.

CJ gazes at my smiling lips, slides his hand along my jaw, and gives me that beautiful, charming grin of his. He bends closer, and closer, until he’s asking, “Yeah. What’s that, darlin’?” right against my mouth.