The Carter Project ✓

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THE WORST THING about waking up used to be the agonizing feeling of opening your eyes and feeling the sunlight hit them mercilessly, and as it seared into your vision, you were met with the realization that today would be just another painfully annoying day of your lower than average life.

Now? It was still exactly that, not to mention what felt like an arm pressed against your naked back. Or well, my naked back, which I had no recollection as to why it was naked, only that I didn't remember not wearing a shirt to bed or anyone else being in bed with me. I was single after my boyfriend Landon had broken up with me and never told me a reason why. It — hopefully — wasn't him, since that would mean he wanted to get back together with me, something he made very clear out of all the things he didn't make clear when he basically kicked me in the heart that night. No, this was somebody else, that much I knew.

The main problem here was less about the what, but more about who. Who in the hell was in my bed? I didn't remember anything from last night, but at this point I could barely even remember my name or my address. I must've been very hungover by the way all of the details in my head were disturbingly fuzzy.

I blinked, tilting my head to the side so I could survey whoever was in the bed with me. He was definitely attractive, with a rugged and hard face, tousled brown hair, a strong jaw, long eyelashes, and olive-toned skin that no one could deny in their right mind. This man — whoever he was — had to be some type of dream come true, or maybe just a dream in general.

I was Mia Casey, after all, and I was not one for one-night-stands, especially not just to rebound. Not to mention how I wasn't lucky enough to wake up with this kind of guy anyway. By the strong arm draped over my back, I could tell he worked out a lot, which was something Landon didn't really do. Landon wasn't completely skinny, but this guy was on a different level of ripped and I could only guess that he played some kind of sport for whatever school he went to.

Trying not to wake him, I shifted my body under him more so I could get a better look at what parts of him were not wrapped up in sheets at the moment. And when I got out from underneath his hold on me, that was when I realized I had made a fatal mistake.

"Oh my God!"

"Good morning, babe," a sleepy Carter Abrams mumbled into his sheets. "Did you sleep well? I hope not. I know I was doing anything but sleeping."

My heart was racing, my thoughts processing too fast for coherence, and my lungs weren't and would likely never be physically prepared for the hyperventilating that I was doing right now. There was no way I slept with Carter Abrams, that was the last thing I wanted to do in any lifetime. If you juxtaposed my eagerness to sleep with him against twenty of the historically evil villains, he would still probably rank around fifteen, considering I despised him that much. I felt as I had taken all of the right steps in my life just for something like this to not happen.

But staring at the scene before me, I guess it did happen. There was no way it didn't happen honestly. I was standing in his wrecked bedroom, naked from head-to-toe while he was passed out on his bed in the same state of undress. I stepped over to lift up the blanket and sure enough: man buns — the good kind.

"Oh no!" I cried. "Oh no, oh no, oh no!"

"Oh yeah, baby," Carter mumbled under his breath, making me roll my eyes. It made sense that he was taking this so nonchalantly because this was his thing. He was the guy who usually slept around with girls in our grade — sometimes even in the ones above and below us if he were lucky — this was second nature to him.