Raising my fist, I knock on her door once before it swings open.
“Hey, beautiful,” I say as I pull her into my arms.
Cora comes willingly and buries her face into my chest, right above my heart.
“Hi,” she mumbles against my shirt.
When she pulls back, I lean down and kiss her lips softly. “I missed you.”
“I missed you too. Now get in here.” She grabs me by the front of my hoodie and pulls me inside her room, shutting the door behind us. “Make yourself comfortable.”
I drop my bag at the foot of her bed, out of the way, and kick off my shoes. “I didn’t realize how tall your bed is,” I say when I get onto it.
“Yeah, I have it on stilts so I can have some storage underneath,” she says as she gets onto the bed too.
Instead of curling up into my side like I expect her to do, she keeps her distance and faces me.
“Is something wrong?” My heart begins to race.
Shit, is she going to end this before we can really start? Did I do something to fuck this up? Did someone say something?
It’s like she can sense my spiral because she reaches out and grabs my hand, squeezing it with hers.
“Hey, we’re good. I just want to talk to you about something.”
“Sure, what’s up?” I say as I try to calm down.
She isn’t ending this. Just breathe.
“I had a visitor today.”
I frown as I study her. “Okay…”
“Your ex that we ran into this morning, Monica? She stopped by my room.”
“Why?”
“She wanted to warn me off of you.”
I open my mouth to defend myself, but Cora raises her hand, cutting me off.
“Before you say anything, everything she said went in one ear and out the other, but I wanted to talk to you about her. Oh, and she gave me this.”
Cora leans over the edge of her bed and grabs something. When she comes back up, she hands me a shirt. Reluctantly, I spread it out and see that it’s a shirt from The Williamson Hotel. I got it after my luggage was lost on a trip to Boston.
“I don’t even remember the last time I saw this.”
“Apparently you left it at her place,” she deadpans.
I scrunch my nose. “And she kept it for a year? Seriously?”
“Guess so.”
“That’s…”
“Yeah, my thoughts exactly.”
“Do I want to know what she said?”
