Page 185

She’s smiling up at me.

We get in the elevator, and I kiss her until we reach the third floor, and she grins at me like I’ve just agreed to something.

39

It Is Literally October

Kylie

I wake up Saturday morning in Nash’s bed with my nose cold, which means one thing.

The window is open. Again.

It’s fucking October, and I am apparently a big baby. I pull him closer to me because Nash Kennebeck has the body temperature of a hundred degrees, and I need his warmth. He’s still asleep. He doesn’t move when I pull him closer. I could probably crawl on top of him, and he’d still stay asleep. Eventually, I find the strength to close the window.

“Kylie,” he mutters in his sleep.

I turn around. His eyes are still closed. His face is still in the pillow.

“You’re not even awake.”

“Open the window.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

He catches me around the back of my thigh, and then I’m being hauled sideways onto the mattress with absolutely no ceremony whatsoever, and he rolls half on top of me and puts his face in my neck.

“Nash—”

“It’s hot in here.”

“I’m freezing.”

“Put more clothes on.”

I get my feet on his calves because they’re freezing, and I have a point to prove. He makes a noise into my neck and tries to move away from me, but I hook both ankles around him so he can’t.

“You’re right. You are freezing,” he says.

“Let go of me.”

He doesn’t let go.

We end up like we always end up, which is me lying across his chest while he pretends to go back to sleep. He’s got one hand up under my shirt on my back, his eyes are shut, and the room is freezing, and I’m warm from my chin to my knees.

I reach over him for my phone off the windowsill.

My hand goes flat on his side on the way past. All the way across it, the smooth part and the part that’s gathered up and the deep end of it down by his hip, and I don’t stop, because I’m reaching for my phone.

He doesn’t move. Not his hand, not his breathing, not one muscle in his whole body.

I check the time. It’s seven. I put the phone back.

“It’s only seven,” I tell him.

“Mm.”

I put my head back down on his chest and listen to his heart go and let him have another twenty minutes.