Page 200 of Tell Me I'm Enough

“With your hand or a girl?”

I feel Simone chuckle against my chest.

“None of your business!”

“Ah shit! Let me see who you’ve got in there!”

I grab the thermos from my side table and chuck it at the door.

“No need to get feisty, princess!” he yells over the music. “Just hurry up and get out here! And you better be wrapping your shit! We don’t need more little Masons running around doing keg stands by the time they take their first steps!”

Simone starts fully laughing now, and I have to hold my hand over her mouth to quiet her so he doesn’t hear.

I roll out of bed first, tugging back on my jumpsuit while Simone sits on the edge of the mattress, pulling one of my shirts over her head.

My room smells like her now.

Which feels…dangerous.

She digs through the pile of clothes on the floor and holds up her bra with a grimace. “Wow. I just threw this anywhere, didn’t I?”

“You were the one so desperate to get out of it,” I tease.

She flips me off and throws the bra at my chest. “Spare me. If there’s a desperate one here, it’s you.”

“You want this back?” I say, holding up the tiny scrap of fabric. “Or am I keeping it as a souvenir?”

She walks over to grab it back, and I pull her in to me, leaning down to hover my mouth over her neck. “And for the record, I’m more than desperate when it comes to you.”

She leans back, looking up at me, and I can see the goosebumps forming on her arms. “Careful, Sinclair.”

I give her a playful, innocent look. “What?”

She snatches her bra back and then turns around, taking off my shirt and tugging the bra onto her shoulders. I walk up behind her, taking the back of the bra, clasping it for her. She looks over her shoulder at me; her face is slightly between asoft smile and a teasing grin. It makes the moment feel more intimate and too charged.

“Don’t tell me you’re catching feelings, Playboy,” she teases.

Her words snap me back into reality—fast.

Wow.

I can’t actually be stupid enough to think whatever I feel is reciprocated here. I can’t be that dumb. I know how this works.

It’s just my delusional heart that never seems to get the memo—people only want you as long as you’re useful to them in some way. They never actually wantyou…or want to stay once they get what they want from you.

I back up a step, putting the walls up where they belong. “No, of course not.”

I watch her shrink a little at that, and I hate the way I want to convince myself it means something that it doesn’t.

I shake it off, tugging the white tank top over my head and handing her her cat ears off the floor. “I’m gonna go smoke outside.”

She just stands there and nods, both of us knowing something here just flipped, but neither of us saying anything else about it.

I walk past her, needing to get out of here, needing some air…needing a damn drink.

Once downstairs, I search for anything stronger than beer.

Where the fuck is all the liquor?