“That’s exactly right…you were not his unicorn.”
“I wasn’t his unicorn,” I repeated in a whisper. “Can I just—”
“I’m sorry, Chelsea. Our time is up for today. We’ll explore this issue a little more next Tuesday.
“Okay. Thanks, Dr. Little.”
Blowing out a long breath, I plopped onto my bed and tried to make sense of what she’d just said.
Unicorn. Hmm.
My body stilled at the sound of laughing.
At first I thought I was imagining it.
It was coming from behind my headboard.
I jumped up.
“Unicorn. What the fuck!” he said in his deep voice before cackling some more.
Damien.
He’d been listening to my therapy session!
My stomach dropped.
How could he hear all that through the wall?
“You’ve been eavesdropping on me?” I asked.
“No. You’ve been interrupting my work.”
“I don’t understand.”
“There’s a hole in the wall. I can’t help but hear your hot mess phone conversations when I’m working.”
“A…hole in the wall? You’ve known about this hole?”
“Yes. I haven’t gotten around to fixing it. Must have been there before I bought the building. Probably used to be a glory hole or some shit.”
“You’ve been listening to me…through a glory hole?”
“No. You’ve been subjecting me to asinine conversations with people who are ripping you off…through a glory hole.”
“You are such a…”
“A-hole?”
CHAPTER FOUR
YOU BACON ME CRAZY
The following day in work, I couldn’t help but obsess over the fact that Damien had been listening to my private conversations. Was that even legal?
The night before, I’d stopped our communication through the wall pretty quickly after his revelation, retreating to the living room and polishing off a bottle of Zinfandel with a side of cookie dough.
Thankfully, I was too busy at the youth center today to let it totally consume me, since it was the evening of the center’s annual breakfast-for-dinner function. Once a year, the staff cooked a giant breakfast in the industrial-sized kitchen for all of the kids. My responsibility was frying pounds of bacon.
On the walk home, literally reeking of bacon grease, I resumed my obsessing over the hole in the wall. I’d noticed that the opening was actually right behind my bed. My only saving grace was that if my room was adjacent to his office, maybe he wasn’t typically in there as much at night as he would have been if it were another room. Maybe he hadn’t heard all of my sessions. Or maybe I was just kidding myself.
Exactly how much did Damien know? I got into some really private stuff with Dr. Little. Backtracking through it all during the walk home, I nearly knocked into a fruit stand.
Feeling fired up, when I arrived at my building, I impulsively passed my door and charged over to Damien’s apartment. The dogs, who were normally quiet in the evenings, were barking up a storm for some reason.
Knocking frantically, I planned to demand that Damien tell me exactly what he’d heard through my wall. When he didn’t open, I knocked harder. The barking intensified, but still no answer. Just as I was about to turn around and leave, the door flew open.
Damien’s dark hair was drenched, and beads of water were dripping from his forehead down to his chest. He was completely wet. The carved V at the bottom of his abs was proof that all of that working out downstairs was paying off. A small towel wrapped around his waist was the only piece of fabric on his otherwise naked body.
Rippled muscular body.
Holy shit.
He was obscenely hot.
I pried my eyes upward. “What are you doing answering the door like that?”
“What am I doing? What are you doing, knocking on my door like a lunatic? I tried to avoid having to get out of the shower, but I thought there was something seriously wrong. And what the hell is that smell? That’s not bacon, is it?”
“Yes. I was cooking bacon at work. I—”
“Fuck!” he growled through his teeth.
“I came to talk to you about fixing the hole in my wall, but clearly—”
Before I could finish my sentence, the two black rottweilers had charged toward where I was standing, pouncing on me as their weight knocked me onto my ass. They frantically licked my face, neck, and chest as I lay on the hallway floor. They were also biting at the material of my shirt.
Terrified, I managed to cry out, “Get them off of me!”
Damien struggled with the massive animals to finally remove them off my body. My face was sticky from slobber.
He forced them back into his apartment as their paws scratched and slipped against the hardwood floor. Damien then returned to the hallway and slammed the door behind him to lock the dogs inside.