“Yes!” Amy squealed excitedly, breaking into a little dance in her cramped kitchen. “I was chanting in my mind in hopes that you would pick it. I miss Simba!”
***
“I’m really sorry sir, but this is really short notice! Calling me at 12AM is hardly professional, for one, and I’ve already made plans with my family tomorrow. I don’t think coming in to work alone with you is the best idea. I apologise, but I really can’t make it.” I lied smoothly as I unlocked the door to my apartment while struggling to hold my handbag and work clothes in my other hand.
“Are you sure? I could really use your pair of hands to my advantage,” Mr. Cooper responded, and I shuddered as the double meaning behind his creepy words sank into my skin in an unpleasant manner.
I cringed as I stepped into my apartment clumsily. “Absolutely sure. Sorry, Mr. Cooper. Have a nice night.” I tried to sound polite while desperately working to end the conversation. In reality, his heavy breathing coming though the phone was creeping me out more than usual, and I closed my door extra quietly, afraid that he was going to hear the fact that I was just returning home from Amy’s house.
“I guess that’s fine then. I will see you on Monday, yes?” he asked, voice strained. His heavy breathing began to ease.
I locked my door cautiously, looking at the brass lock with wide eyes before swallowing down my nerves. “Yes, Sir. Goodnight,” I tried again, sounding less enthusiastic than before.
“Is everything okay, Emily? Are you sure you don’t want to stay talking on the phone with me?” Mr. Cooper asked, making my eyes widen even more than before.
“Everything is fine. I’m sorry; I have to get some sleep. I have an early start to the family event that is on tomorrow.
Goodbye.
” I tried to emphasize again, discarding my work clothes on an abandoned chair in the corner of my living room while flicking on the lamp on the table.
“Very well. Until Monday. Goodnight, Emily.”
I hung up before he had the chance to add anything else, and threw my phone onto my sofa in panic, afraid that he’d pop out of the flat, glass screen any second.
I’m definitely quitting on Monday
morning, I thought to myself as I took off my shoes beside the door. I would rather be homeless than work for someone that old and creepy, and Amy was right; they were making me do things that I learned in
high school.
I was better off somewhere where my qualifications actually mattered.
I cautiously picked up my phone after double checking that everything was locked and decided to type a quick text to Amy:
I’m home, and definitely quitting on Monday.
Creepy Cooper called me and asked me to come in and work with him tomorrow. Alone. Crazy man.
Anyway, thanks for the dinner, it’s at my place next time. Goodnight asshole :D
I sent the text message and picked up the book I was currently reading from the coffee table, before making my way to my room. I threw it on the bed and grabbed a random pair of clean underwear and a baggy shirt from my drawers. I was dying to take a
long
, relaxing shower before bed, to wash off all the fingerprints of my boss.
Once my skin felt raw from scrubbing, I stepped out of the shower and quickly slipped on my clothes before brushing my hair and making my way back to my bedroom. I jumped onto my bed and sighed in contentment once I engulfed myself in the familiar sheets. I wriggled in the soft material to get comfortable.
I checked my phone to see that I had received a text message from Amy telling me that Mr. Cooper was creepy and that I was an idiot. I rolled my eyes at her text and put my phone on the table beside my bed before reaching over and opening the book to the chapter I was up to.
I had only read three words before a loud banging noise erupted throughout my small apartment, making me freeze in fear. I quickly placed my pink bookmark back in between the pages of the thick book and set it aside cautiously, irrationally fearful that putting it down would set off something else in the house. I looked around my bedroom with wide eyes.
The banging noise began again and I jumped out of my bed and grabbed the only weapon I could find - a random shoe with a sharp heel that I had thrown on the floor of my room carelessly. Shoe in hand, I slowly crept out of my room.
The banging noise became louder as I entered the living room, and I realised the source of the noise was coming from the other side of my apartment entrance. I let out a short sigh of relief once I realised that I had locked the door.
“W-Who’s there?” I called out loudly, trying to mask the waver in my voice to hide my fear.
“Emmmmillllllly, hiiiiii…”
A deep, British accent slurred, making me freeze in my tracks once again as the voice sent an all too familiar shiver down my spine. My voice hitched in my throat as I looked over at my white, wooden door in shock, not believing my hearing skills at 1AM after a long day at work.
“Emilllllllly, can you pppppppppplease let me innnn? I alllllwayyyyys l-let youuuuu in…” The loud banging started up once again.
“HEY! WOULD YOU SHUT IT? SOME PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO GET SOME SLEEP HERE!” I heard someone else shout. Their voice sounded distant and muffled from inside my apartment, but it was enough to shake me back into reality.
I threw the heel onto the floor hastily before I ran over and unlocked my front door, just as Adrian’s face turned into his all too familiar scowl.
“YOUUUU SHUT IT!” he snapped back, before turning around slowly once he realised I had opened the door.
“What the hell are you doing here, Adrian?” I hissed, trying to cover up my surprise with anger. “It’s 1AM, and you’re drunk! Go home!”
He was slumped against the wall that connected to my apartment door, and my breath hitched in my throat once his eyes met mine. My conscience must have forgotten the kind of effect Adrian Kingston had on me in real life, because I froze in my doorway as I looked down at his tall seated figure, dark plump lips and strong hazel eyes that were slightly droopy. The smell of alcohol filled my nostrils sharply, the vile stench making me cough a little.
Adrian’s eyes never left my half naked, tired figure, and I sighed and bit my lip while shaking my head at what I was about to do. I moved forward and lifted his right arm to put it over my shoulders for support.
“Don’t make me do all the work,” I muttered at him as I pulled at his right arm in an attempt to get him off the floor. “You’re tall and made of muscle. Get up.”
“Do you know how much I’vvvvvve missed you, Emilyy?” Adrian grumbled as he exerted some effort to pull himself off the floor. “I’ll tell you. A lot.”
I tried to hide my blush from his drunken words as I put more of his body weight against me. “Let’s get you inside,” I murmured, dragging his tall, built frame into my tiny apartment with as much energy as I could muster.
“Didn’t you miss me?” he asked, pouting as he looked into my eyes again. I opened my mouth to respond but Adrian wasn’t done talking. “I hope you did. I thought about you a lot. Especially about our kiss in the beautiful sunnnnnnnshine state. I even called a girl in bed Emily because I was thinking of you. Whoops.” He chuckled to himself and abruptly stopped and frowned. “I don’t know why. You’re always just
there.
In my head, I mean. Not in real life. I tried to get you out of there, but you wouldn’t leave. You’re so annoying.”
He groaned, making me laugh slightly as I placed him onto my sofa.
“I’ll be right back,” I told him, going into the kitchen and pouring a cup of water for him. I didn’t have any medication that would cure a hangover; even though I had been meaning to invest in some thanks to Amy’s wild nights where she’d crash at my place because she was too lazy to go back home.
I re-entered the living room and handed him the clear glass silently, and watched his throat bob up and down as he gulped down the clear liquid in under 5 seconds.
“Good stuff,” he said with an approving nod. He regarded me with a curious look. “What is it?”
“Water,” I stated with an amused smile.
“Oh. It tastes better than usual.” He studied the glass cup intensely. “Probably because it’s from you.” After a while, he asked again, “Did you miss me, Emily?” He looked at me hopefully, more vulnerable than I’ve ever seen him.
I bit my lip, unsure of how to respond. Did I miss him? He was constantly on my mind, and I found myself comparing everything I did to a moment I shared with him while I worked with him. Still, he was a jerk that didn’t deserve to be missed at all, and I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of letting him know that I had missed him. Then again he was drunk, and was slurring out nonsense. He probably wouldn’t even remember this night tomorrow morning.
“I missed you, Adrian,” I finally replied, looking him straight in the eye.
He let out a loud sigh of relief, and I watched as his shoulder visibly relaxed underneath the material of his light blue shirt. “That’s good. I think I like you,” he stated, before looking around my apartment. “Your house is cute. Small, but niceeee.” He began to nod slowly and met my eyes again, but I was still staring at him in shock.
“What did you say?” I asked.
“Um,” he frowned hard, thinking. “Oh, I said your house is small but-”
“No, no,” I cut him off, “before that.”
“Oh. I said I like you. A lot.” He repeated it casually, even punctuating it with a yawn. “Where is the bed?” he asked, looking around my living room again.
“I- Um- Uh, how about I drive you home?” I stuttered, still trying to process his words.
“No. I want to sleep with you tonight. That’s why I caaaame hereee.”
I bit my lip as something new processed in my brain. “Hold on. How did you know which apartment was mine? You’ve only been outside my building once…” I trailed off, still frowning in thought.
“I’ve come here before to try and get you to come back and work for me, but you weren’t home. I want to sleep with you in your bed now.” Adrian began unzipping his pants.
I let out a gasp – both from the fact that he was taking his pants off in front of me, and for the fact that he had come here to offer me another chance at the job which I ruined because I wasn’t home – before I shot up from my seat across from him and locking my apartment door.
Once I turned back around, Adrian had already taken off his dark jeans and was halfway done with unbuttoning his shirt. He looked down at his fumbling fingers with a frown etched onto his handsome features; the struggle to unbutton them while he was drunk was clearly evident in his expression.
I walked over to him and gently pulled his hands away from the shirt, before continuing to unbutton it for him myself and slowly pushing the shirt off his broad shoulders.
“Come on,” I said, gently leading him down the short hallway and into my bedroom, “let’s get you to bed.”
We both got beneath the covers and he instantly wrapped his familiar, muscly arms around my waist. As I turned off the lamp on the table next to me, I heard him murmur.
“I like this. And you.”
Then I felt his breathing become even as he fell fast asleep.
I wasn’t sure why he was here or why I let him in not just through my door but into my bed. But there was one thing I knew for certain – this was not going to end well in the morning.
Chapter Sixteen
There are only three things that would force my body into doing any type of physical activity:
(1) if I were doing it for charity, (2) if I was trying to prove myself to someone, or – and this was the reason that had my feet pounding onto the moldy pavements of New York City at 6AM – (3) if I was trying to avoid something that is fogging up each functioning brain cell within my mind and I’m trying to get away from it.
Or
him,
in this case.
I was kind of hoping going for an intense run at the break of dawn would somehow clear up the fogginess in my mind while also managing to make the whole Adrian-is-in-my-apartment-snoring scenario just a figment of my imagination.
Unfortunately, once I returned home from my run and walked into my bedroom to snatch a few items of clothing for my shower, Adrian was still sprawled out on my bed, looking peaceful as his torso slowly rose up and down from his steady breathing. My gaze lingered on his shirtless torso for a little while longer before I left my room and made my way to the shower.
I peeled off my sticky attire before jumping into the warm shower and began to wash the sticky sweat off my skin. How was I supposed to act when Adrian woke up? Did he even remember what he told me last night? While I was able to recite the entire scene word for word, Adrian was intoxicated. I highly doubted he would remember his ‘please come back and work for me because I really miss you’ speech, so I decided to stay silent about it until he brought it up.
I took longer than usual in the shower, savouring the way my muscles relaxed under the hot water, and was just about to turn it off when the bathroom door opened. My eyes grew wide with shock as Adrian casually strode into the bathroom and made his way over to the toilet in the corner. I opened my mouth to scream but chocked on my shock before I snatched the towel off the rack beside the shower.
The movement caught Adrian’s eye just before he pulled down his pants and I covered myself with the towel before my face went red with embarrassment. I turned off the water and turned to glare at him.
“What the hell are you doing?!” I exclaimed, wrapping the towel tighter around my naked body.
Adrian snapped out of his shocked stare and groaned. “Don’t talk so loud,” he mumbled, before he began walking over to where my rigid figure stood. He stopped directly in front of me and smirked down at my flushed state. “Good morning,” he murmured as his eyes scanned my body hungrily.
I tried to cover my tomato face with my fiercest glare. “Get out of the bathroom.” I scowled, giving him a look of disbelief.
“No,” he replied, before going back to the toilet in the corner. He began to pull his pants down and I squeaked and turned away in shock. “Adrian! I’m in here, you know!
Naked,
might I add! That’s not something I want to see!” I screeched while avoiding looking at him and snatching the clothes I brought in with me, off the small shelf.
He chuckled. “I needed to use the toilet. Can’t you imagine this when we get married one day? You coming out of the shower – I would’ve joined you of course, which, by the way, I’m offended you didn’t invite me to join you in the first place.”
I groaned and opened the door. “Shut up and get cleaned up. I’m going to get dressed and make breakfast.” I tried to get rid of the blush that seemed permanently stuck to my face whenever he was around.
“Yes housewife, thank you housewife,” Adrian called out. I could practically feel his smirk before I slammed the door shut and made my way back to my room.
By the time I had finished getting dressed and was putting the plates of breakfast down on the small island in my kitchen, Adrian had finished from the bathroom and walked into the kitchen in nothing but his boxers, making the spatula I was gripping fall out of my hand and land onto the floor with a loud clatter.
My eyes widened in shock and I quickly bent down to retrieve the utensil just as Adrian began smirking as he caught me looking at his bare torso.
“Smells good,” he commented once I threw the spatula into the sink. I nodded meekly and sat across from him just as he dug into his meal hungrily.
Adrian hadn’t brought up last night yet, and I was beginning to wonder if they were just drunken thoughts. Why would he come here, to my house? It had been over a month since we last spoke to each other, and it wasn’t on good terms either.
I looked down at my scrambled eggs with a small frown. I was hoping the job offer part of his drunken speech was true – I didn’t want to go back to that moldy underwear factory and have to put up with creepy Cooper again. This reminded me that I was going into work tomorrow and quit my job at that factory, and I cringed as I thought of being in the small office alone with the sleazy old man who was my boss.
“Emily?” Adrian’s voice sounded, pulling me out of my thoughts.
I looked up to meet his amused expression, frowning slightly. “Sorry, what?” I asked.
“You tell me. You’re looking at your food as if it just twerked like Miley Cyrus did at the VMA’s.” Adrian chuckled at his own joke, looking proud of himself, and I fought the smile that was threatening to escape my lips.
“I was just thinking,” I replied, taking a bite of the loaf of bread on my plate.
“About my offer last night? You don’t have a choice in the matter. You’re coming back to work for me.”
I almost choked on the piece of bread that I was trying to swallow as he said those words, and I looked back up at his smirk with wide eyes. So he did remember.
“I… I’m pretty sure it’s my choice, not yours.” I glared at him in response. In reality, I wanted the job back more than I could describe – but he didn’t need to know that.
Adrian’s arrogant smirk practically melted away as the words left my lips, and his expression turned to one of desperation. “Shortcake, please.” I bit my lip and tried not to blush at the nickname he had assigned to me. I hadn’t heard it in a while.
“Ever since you left… Well, I haven’t exactly been paying much attention to the business. My mind has been on you the entire time; I
need
you to come back in Emily. Please.” Adrian had gotten up during his talk to stand beside me.
I looked up at his eyes and inhaled sharply. The amount of vulnerability in Adrian’s expression caught me completely off guard, and my steady breathing hitched in my throat as I looked straight into his hazel eyes. Something hit me just then, and I realised just how much Adrian had an effect on me. I dragged my gaze away from his and looked down at my plate of food before letting out a sigh.
“Okay.”
“No, please, Emily. I need you – wait, what?” Adrian asked, cutting his begging short.
I laughed softly. “I said okay. I’ll come back, but there are going to be some rules,” I replied sternly, giving him a hard look.
“Anything. Okay, not anything. If I don’t like it, I’m not going to listen to the rule.” Adrian smirked, shrugging once I gave him a look of disbelief. “I’m still the boss,” he pointed out, making me blush again.
“Whatever,” I grumbled, trying to stop my blush from deepening. “Number one, no more mood swings. If you have a problem – business or personal related – you tell me straight away. I’m not going to tolerate your PMS Sessions where you’d give me the cold shoulder.”
“No mood swings. Got it.” Adrian nodded, grinning widely. I felt my own lips tug into a smile, catching his enthusiasm as my eyes took in every feature of his grinning face.
“Number two,” I continued, clearing my throat as I felt another blush crawl its way up my neck, “No more women while I’m working. Do it in your own time.” My voice became snippy at that point, and I tried to mask the sick feeling at the pit of my stomach at the thought of Adrian with another woman, before mentally scolding myself for thinking about that in the first place.
“No women. Got it.” He nodded, smirking at my flushed face.
“Shut up.” I scowled, making him chuckle. “Last rule,” I continued, glaring, “Business only. We’re not having a repeat of the last time I worked for you.”
“Nope. I don’t like the last rule, so I’m not listening to it. Now it’s my turn.” His grin widened. “Rule one: you’re sharing my office.”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine. Since you’re listening to my first two rules, it won’t be so bad,” I teased.
He chuckled and his smirk turned into a stern glare. “Rule two; you have lunch with
me,
nobody else.” Like my second rule earlier, Adrian’s voice turned snappy while he said the rule to me, and I frowned.
“Is this so I don’t interact with Allen?” I asked, “ How is he, by the way? He broke all contact with me after I quit, and I don’t think he did it by choice.” I looked at Adrian pointedly and waited for an explanation.
“Yeah, it wasn’t by choice,” he conceded, but with a glare. “I made him.”
I frowned in response. “Why?! We got along really well!” I exclaimed, giving him a look of disbelief.
“Because you’re mine,” he snapped in reply as his glare hardened. “You’re mine and he was taking you away from me. I’ll let him talk to you when I think he can talk to you.”
“That’s not even fair! You can’t control your best friend!” I cried, still in shock.
“I can and I did,” he replied swiftly, making me huff in response.
“You’re impossible,” I grumbled. “Are there any other rules?” I asked, giving him a sarcastic smile.
“For now, no. You start tomorrow. Welcome back to Kingston Corp.,” Adrian smirked and placed a quick peck on my cheek, “Shortcake.”
My skin instantly tinged pink from the contact, and I looked away from his satisfied expression to hide the effect he had on me.
“I- I can’t start tomorrow. I need to go tell my old Boss that I quit first. He’s not going to let me leave easily, so it’ll take a while…” I cringed as a mental image of creepy Cooper smiling at me popped into my mind again, and I bit my lip to try and figure out a way that will make him let me quit without delaying the process any further.
“He?” Adrian asked, raising an eyebrow before narrowing his eyes. “I’ll come with you then,” he announced, and I watched his shoulders visibly tense.
“Relax, Adrian.” I laughed.
“Who is he?” Adrian pressed, “Has he touched you or hurt you in any way?”
“Oh, he’s really handsome. One of the nicest men I’ve seen in my life so far. You should see him, he’s quite the catch. He has a memorable smile, too.” I tried not to laugh as Adrian’s expression darkened at my description of creepy Cooper, and I left my seat to clean the plates that we had wiped clean of food.
“I’m going to get my clothes for tomorrow and come back to your apartment,” Adrian declared, booking no argument. “Do not leave. I’m sleeping over again tonight.”
I gave him a confused look. “Why? You don’t-”
“Unless you want to come back to my place? My bed and television are bigger, after all.” He smirked, and I flicked some water onto his face, making him chuckle.
“I’m fine, thank you. You can go home – and stay there. I’ll see you at work tomorrow.” I smiled, remembering the fact that I had my job back.
“No. I’m coming back. Or I could always make you ‘lose your keys’ again so you can stay at mine.” Adrian smirked.
I wiped my hands on the tea towel I had hanging near the sink before turning to face him with a frown. “What do you mean ‘
you’ll
make me lose
my
keys’?” I asked, narrowing my eyes suspiciously.
Adrian’s arrogant expression fell once again that morning, turning to a guilty one before he covered it up with a false look of confusion. “What? I didn’t say that,” he mumbled, running a hand through his messy hair.
I tried to avert my eyes from his locks, before snapping out of it and glaring at him. “Adrian! That night when I lost my keys, you
purposely
hid them from me?!” I exclaimed, giving him a look of disbelief.