24

TWENTY-SECOND HOUR

"We've never had a proper lunch," Anastasia observed with closed eyes. She was still not yet fully awake.

Christian humid a response in agreement. His call with his shrink didn't resolve any issue, though he was visibly calmer, he was still his grumpy old self, jealous about the whole situation with Luke and his girl, even though he had nothing to worry about if he just took a bit of his time to learn more about the entire thing.

"Are you hungry?" She asked sleepily, still not planning on moving an inch, even her lips barely moved when she said those words.

"Not really," he replied, staring at her still unable to make up his mind about the cluster-fuck that he found himself in.

"There's a sandwich, I hope your security didn't eat it." This was the longest sentence she had uttered in her sleepy form and she could already feel the energy draining from her as she finished speaking. She didn't know whether he had heard it or not because he didn't make a sound and she refused to open her eyes.

"You're staring." She mumbled lazily, feeling his eyes still on her.

"Yeah, can't help it." He shrugged grazing his knuckles against her cheek. "Baby, I need to get up, my ass is going to hurt."

She groaned at the notion of having to move but got up once he told her that his butt would hurt if she didn't. As lazy of a person as she was, she wouldn't want to inflict pain on another individual.

"Was I out that long?" She rolled off him and spread eagle on the bed, taking up as much space as she could, still refusing to open her eyes to fight off sleep.

"No, but you were snoring." He grinned, enjoying telling her the fact.

"I didn't know I snore," she scowled. "You liar." She could feel the smugness radiating off him, so she assumed that he was just playing with her.

"I can record it for you the next time." He jested, "wonder how I'm going to get any sleep at night with you snoring like a hog next to me."

"I'll make sure I snore right in your ear next time. Besides, who cares if you're getting any sleep or not, it certainly isn't my problem."

"You're not nice."

"You should know that by now, it's not like this is your first day knowing me." She shrugged lazily, her eye lids were still feeling droopy. "But, just so you know, since you're my loving boyfriend, I'll be sure to take pity on you the next time we sleep together." She announced, though in her mind she was making a mental note to let him fall asleep first before she started snoring, since she had no idea how loud she was.

"I wanted to talk to you about that music video we're going to make." He said, making sure he was being specific this time. He still needed time to get over the fact that she was still friends with her ex-partners in close proximity, but only without any romantic emotional attachment.

"Yeah?" She gave him her full attention as best as she could with closed eyes. She was still a little tentative around him because she could never really cut off her past and start her future clean, so she could only make her future become aware of her past.

"Do you have any ideas how we're going to do it?"

She pondered for a moment. "Wait, you're for real? We're making a not-so-PG-rated music video." Now she was wide awake with her eyes wide open and staring right into his gunmetal blue eyes, it was more gray than blue but she could see a hint of the color blue upon closer inspection.

"Yeah, thought it would be fun." He shrugged nonchalantly.

"I thought you were joking."

"No, why would I joke about that?"