Chapter 146

I drag my hand down my face and force myself to look at Kent. He’s looking right at me, of course, from his place outside the room. Looking at me as I sit in the clothes he sent, having a movie night with his son.

“Is it a surprise?” Daniel asks, working hard to pull Kent’s attention back to him. It doesn’t work. Kent keeps his eyes fixed on me. “I’m just having a nice evening in with my fiancé, after all,” Daniel continues. “What’s so surprising about that.”

Kent ignores his son. I shift uncomfortably under his gaze, looking down at the popcorn in my lap. I look up when I hear Kent speak again.

“Well,” he says, his voice conclusive. “I wouldn’t want to interrupt. You two have fun.” He pauses, looking me straight in the eye for a good ten seconds before turning slowly and striding away, perfectly in control. Daniel rudely slams the door after him.

“Daniel,” I sigh. “Do you have to be such a dick?”

“He’s being a dick, Fay!” Daniel explodes, throwing his hands in the air. “What he’s doing to you – how he’s treating you! I’m saving you from that!”

“Daniel,” I hesitate, looking at him with sorrow on my face. “Did you ever think that maybe...”

He goes still, staring at me with his mouth open. I trace the design on my duvet, awkward.

“Seriously?” Daniel breathes. “He got to you too?”

I look up at him, a little rueful. He did.

“Can we just...enjoy the night?” I sigh, gesturing towards the empty side of the bed. “You scared him away – isn’t that what you wanted?”

Daniel sighs too, putting his forehead in his hand and closing his eyes to think it through.

“Just come watch the movie with me” I plead softly. It breaks my heart to see my friend so upset, even though...well, even though I know that this isn’t going to end well for us. That if I start sleeping with his dad, things are forever going to be changed between Daniel and me.

And suddenly I decide that what I actually want – really – is one last real night with my best friend. While he’s my best friend.

Daniel nods then, perhaps coming to the same conclusion, and climbs back into the bed with me. I rest my head on his shoulder and he gives me a chaste little kiss on the forehead, both of us apparently deciding not to talk about it. Perhaps, in this case, silence is best.

We finish Clueless, and a couple more movies, before I eventually drift off to sleep with my head still on my friend’s shoulder.

But I swear, my last waking thought is to wonder what the hell would have happened, really, if I made Daniel go away. And called Kent back.

Fall For My Ex's Mafia Father Chapter 0145 And let him peel this little fur robe from my shoulders and drop it to the floor.

______________ I wake up the next morning to the sound of a knock on the door at six AM. I groan, blinking awake, and look sideways to see Daniel doing the same in the bed next to me.

“Mornin’,” he murmurs to me, rubbing his eyes. When I get up, Daniel turns over onto this stomach, burrowing back into the pillows.

“Lazy,” I chide, smiling at him and heading for the door. “What, you don’t get up to receive your own clothes deliveries in the morning?”

“Clothes deliveries?” Daniel asks, peering at me. “Your clothes are delivered?”

I open the door and give the housekeeper standing there a smile, accepting the folded clothes and the white box beneath. My eyes raise at that – the white box in the morning is new. Then, I turn back to Daniel, frowning a little. “You don’t get clothes delivered?”

“No, Fay,” Daniel says, sitting up and staring at me. I see him put it all together in his sleepy mind as I walk back to the bed. “Oh, gross, seriously? He picks out your clothes every day?”

“I kind of like it,” I say, shrugging and laying out the clothes I’ve been sent this morning, tossing the white box on my vanity and hoping Daniel doesn’t ask about it. “Takes a lot of pressure off of me. And he has good taste.”

“It’s so creepy, Fay,” Daniel whispers, scrunching his nose.

“He’s been doing it since I moved in,” I reply, nonchalant as I admire the pretty blue and white dress with scalloped cap sleeves that Kent sent today.

“I thought it was Fiona, at first, but she told me it’s him.”