Chapter 47

KNOX

By the timeWillow wakes up, I have a full platter of breakfast already delivered to the room.

Expensive, freshly squeezed orange juice.

Perfectly cooked, thick, slightly crisp bacon.

Eggs so fluffy they almost float off the plate.

Waffles made with thick nooks and crannies to hold plenty of syrup and butter.

And coffee.

Of course there’s coffee.

I never served a woman breakfast in bed before.

Crossing more lines with Willow.

Making me feel.

Feel…

When Willow sees me rolling a breakfast cart into the bedroom and realizes what it means, her face turns a bright shade of red.

“Knox,” she says.

“We have to eat,” I say. “You have to eat. This is just a… gesture. That’s all.”

Great. Nice job, Knox. She’s excited and you just cut it all down. You took a sweet, romantic offering and made it sound like you did it out of obligation.

“I’m going to go get dressed and then we can eat,” Willow says.

She inches to the side of the bed and grabs the covers to take with her.

She goes into the bathroom to get dressed.

I stare at the breakfast cart and feel like flipping it over.

Amazing how just last night things seemed so good. Things were flowing.

And even this morning… still flowing along…

Until I say something stupid.

I start walking toward the bathroom door to fix this situation, but then I hear a noise.

It sounds like the hotel room door is opening.

My eyes go wide.

The word fuck echoes in my head.

I race to the bathroom and knock. “Willow, we’ve got to go. Right now.”

The door opens. “What?”

Before I can say anything else, voices echo from the main part of the hotel room.

“Is someone in our room?” Willow asks.

“Yeah,” I say.

“Knox?”

“It’s my father,” I confess. “He’s got a client. A meeting. Big meeting. We’ve got to get out of here. Right now.”

Willow’s jaw drops as she connects the dots.

I grab her hand and we make a run for it.

I quickly stop at the breakfast cart and grab a coffee.

Willow grabs for an orange. She shrugs.

We bolt out of the bedroom, side by side, only to have my father and a client standing there, surprised to see us.

“Bathroom is working fine now, sir,” I call out. “Bed is a little messy. Might want to call that in. We’re going to the basement to check the auxiliary hookup next.”

“Yeah, what he said,” Willow says.

She starts to laugh.

Laughing? Right now? Are you kidding me?

We run to the hotel room door.

I look back and the look my father gives me…

He knows this isn’t like me.

I don’t do these kind of crazy things.

I can only imagine what he’s thinking.

Wondering just what kind of person Willow is and how I got tied up with her.

If I had an answer, I’d explain it.

Well… I’m going to have to explain soon…

Willow and I rush to the elevators.

She smacks the ground floor button.

Lucky enough the elevators don’t stop once.

A cute little ringtone type sound plays and the doors open.

We walk through the lobby and outside, hanging a right, putting distance between us and the hotel.

I take my phone out of my back pocket.

Didn’t feel like going back to campus yesterday. A lot to talk about. Had no choice. I’ll pay you for the room as soon as I sign my hockey deal.

That’s as good of a text as my father is going to get from me.

Now I have to face Willow.

I am fully prepared for a well-deserved slap across the face.

When I look at her… she jumps to her toes, throws her arms around my neck, and pulls at me.

We end up kissing.

“That was surprising,” I say after the kiss ends. “Thought you were going to smack me.”

“Oh, I want to smack you, Knox. Your father had no idea you were using that room.”

“Well… you know what I did tell you…”

“But you didn’t know he needed the room. I was naked in that bed two minutes earlier! What if we were sleeping? What if we were…” Willow gasps.

“I wanted us to have time together off campus, that’s all,” I say. “Just a chance to be alone. There’s a lot to figure out, Willow. Yeah, I’m playing it cool. I always do that. My mind has to work faster than everyone else’s because that’s who I am and how I was raised. So just for once I wanted to-”

Willow jumps up and kisses me again.

She’s blushing this time as she kisses me.

She touches my face and keeps her lips very close to mine.

“I think it’s amazing, Knox,” she whispers. “Sweet and sexy all wrapped up together. But your father definitely hates me now.”

“He probably doesn’t like you all that much,” I say. “But I don’t really care. I like you.”

Willow blushes even harder.

So I fool around with her, get her pregnant, then hang out with her and decide I like her?

“Knox… I like you too.”

We kiss some more.

So that’s where we are at now.

Sneaking around a hotel room we don’t belong in… getting chased out… avoiding campus…

But, hey, at least we like each other, right?