“Well, this wasn’t a confrontation, it was just good ol’ communication. I can’t even imagine getting into a confrontation with you. Can’t imagine anyone getting mad at you for any reason.”
Something soured in my gut.
If only he knew.
Mom had thought there was a lot about me worth getting mad at.
“You can stay as long as you want, Beau. Just…I know I can be a lot, and I want you to know you can tell me if I do things you don’t like. I really want you to tell me. Same as I’ll do with you.”
Oh, god, had I been bothering Lea in some way? Alarm shot through me at the thought. “Have I been doing—have I done something to bother you?”
He smiled at me, that playfulness back. “Yeah. You’re always locked away in your room, and I want to see more of you. Spend time with you.”
I let out a sigh of relief when I realized he’d just been kidding around, but when his words registered, heat crept across my cheeks. “Ah, okay. I’ll try to—to come out more.”
“Good,” he said, getting to his feet. He stood and held out his hand to me. “Friends?”
Friends? A real-life friend? And with a man like Lea?
Excitement twisted around my nerves as I hesitated. Was he…teasing me?
I shook away the thought.
No, he wasn’t a cruel man. He was being entirely genuine. As he always was.
I slid my hand into his. “Yeah,” I said. “Friends.”
His eyes sparkled, then widened. He startled me when he cried, “Oh, shit! I came to ask if you could help us down at the bar. With Monroe’s computer. It’s being really slow and neither of us can figure it out. But if you don’t have any time, that’s totally fine, we’ll figure it out. I just thought I’d ask the tech genius.”
The wink he gave me made me dizzy.
“Oh.” I reached up and fingered the hair at the nape of my neck. “Yeah, sure, I can come look at it.”
“You’re a darling, Beau. Thank you. I’ll call the landlord about the AC.”
He leaned down and kissed my forehead like it was themost natural thing in the world, then hummed his way to the kitchen, leaving me here to quietly unravel.
Monroe’s computer was a mess.
“You have point one kilobytes of space remaining on your hard drive. It’s not a virus or malware, it’s just a full hard drive. That’s why your computer is running so slowly. You’ll have to make some room.”
I glanced at Monroe, who was hovering over me, and tried not to let his size intimidate me.
Or his disposition. He was incredibly reserved, but in a way that made him just look…pissed off. Lea was in the room with us, which was the only reason I wasn’t melting down into a giant puddle of fear.
Shea had told me repeatedly that that was just his face, and he was a genuinely kind person, but it was hard not to let his expression get to me.
“Okay. How do I do that?” he asked gruffly.
“Um, you’ll have to delete things. Go through your files and figure out what you don’t need. And you should probably get an external hard drive—for extra storage or as a backup drive.”
He nodded. “Okay. Where can I get one of those?”
I scratched the back of my neck. “At the—I mean, online, I guess? You can order one or go to an electronics store?”
“Got it. How much do I owe you?”
I waved my hands. “Oh, no, n-nothing!”