Hinged, Grown and Sexy

13. Night Cap

DIVINE

Eli made me think of poetry.

It was ridiculously ironic considering our first date, but it was true. He made me—no, us—like a poem.

Lines of words so pretty they needed to be analyzed for meaning, and a fine, once-in-a-lifetime type of literary work that some would ink to their skin and others would scoff at.

Eli made me think that soulmates were real, and that I had been wrong because I thought someone might have forgotten to make mine.

It was awe-inspiring...and distracting.

Every few minutes my eyes would stray from my computer screen just to stare, and my mind wasn't much better. Fantasies of the future clouded my judgement almost as much as the untapped want that coiled in my stomach.

I was still struggling not to open my big mouth and tell him to fuck me into the literal seams of the couch. Work be damned.

And that was the worst part about it.

I'd never been so thrown off my game by a man before. He cared about me, but he also understood my goals. If you asked him, he probably wanted to help me achieve a few.

Except, accepting his affection felt selfish. It felt like I was taking a break from work before I'd even earned it.

My family was my priority, and I couldn't forget that I had people depending on me. It wasn't just me that he was signing up for, and I refused to make anyone carry the burden that had been thrust on me.

Focus and reasoning renewed by my train of thought, I pulled my feet from Eli's hold with a lame excuse of repositioning myself. He didn't comment, but I could tell from the slight arch of his brow that he didn't believe me as I tucked my feet under me.

I pushed aside the desire to explain myself and pretended that I didn't care, mostly because I couldn't afford to.

Work, on the other hand, was easy in the same way that it was hard. This was a love I could cultivate with more reward than consequence, so it deserved every ounce of effort I could give.

So, the choice should be simple, but rarely things are.

🐞

A deep exhale passed through my lips as I delighted in closing my laptop and shaking in my aching feet. I cast a quick glance to the clock on the wall, and oddly, a flash of disappointment went through me that it was getting late.

"Nightcap?" I blurted before I could think better of it.

Eli's eyes followed me while I abruptly got up to throw something together in the kitchen. I was already pulling down two mugs before he even agreed, and my nervous energy was spent went into preparing some of my famous hot cocoa.

"To answer your question," Eli began from behind me, and I could hear him settling on one of my bar stools. "In five years, I hope my life will look like movie nights with my wife that don't end until sunrise and vacations in countries I've never been to. Something happy, something that soothes the soul."

My hands stilled against the handle of the pot as the life he described materialized in my mind. It seemed almost as comforting as the hot chocolate slowly heating.

"No kids?" I asked with bated breath.

This was another subject I tended to disagree with my partners over: children. I'd probably have more success with men if I didn't mind being a baby mama and set aside my desire to be a wife. But even then, people expected marriage to one day lead to kids, and infertility was the only acceptable reason that it wouldn't.