I couldn’t help him at all.
“Are you doing that thing where you feel bad for things that were out of your control?” Isaac hums, going to sit on my couch and lounging back on it.
“Yeah, yep. That is a favorite pastime of mine,” I agree, standing by my kitchen counter while I try to figure out what I’m supposed to do here.
Or, rather, why he’s still here and acting like he isn’tgoinganywhere.
“Do you want to watch a movie?” Isaac asks, already picking up the remote from my coffee table.
I sigh and trudge over to fall down on the couch, though instead of sitting beside him, I go to the other end, kick my shoes off, and draw my feet up under me on the cushions.
When I do glance up to see his reaction, it’s not a happy one. Isaac sighs to himself, echoing my own dramatic exhale, and falls over like a giant dog so that his head is on my thigh.
All I can do is stare down at him quizzically.
“What are you doing?” I ask after a few moments of just staring at each other. It feelsweird. Especially because it’s impossible not to notice the flecks of blue in his gray eyes. A part of me that’s too big to stamp down wants to reach out and run my fingers through his hair, just to see if it’s as soft as it feels. I hate that it’s such an overwhelming temptation because I feel like Isaac can see it just as clearly as I can feel it.
So I tuck one hand under my leg and grab the remote from him with the other.
“You’re acting like this is a date,” I tell him, wondering why I haven’t told him to get off of my lap.
“It’s not?” he asks, his brows rising toward his bangs. “I thought it was.”
The statement catches me off guard, and I stare at him again, needing a moment to think. “But you…you broke in,” I clarify, my fingers tightening on the black plastic. “And you…told me you were taking me to brunch.” As if maybe he’s forgotten the events of the last couple of hours.
“Right,” he agrees slowly, like it’s for my benefit that he says things clearly and enunciates. “Because I was taking you on adate. Unless the kids are calling them something else these days? And now I believe we’re at…oh what are those dang Gen Z kids saying now?” I roll my eyes at his words and the exaggerated way he says them. “Netflix and chill?”
“We aren’t going to fuck,” I say, the words escaping my mouth before I can rearrange them or, in a perfect world, justnot say them. “Which…I’m not saying you were suggesting that…” I trail off, thoroughly embarrassed when it’s possible he was just making a joke.
“In the realm of all the things I want to do to you,fuckingyou is only about sixty percent of them,” Isaac tells me, sitting up much closer to me than he has any right to be. “So that leaves us with a lot of other things we can do.” He’s smiling, eyes dancing, and I have a feeling he’s laughing at me. “Also, for the record, I was totally suggesting that.”
“Why?”
“Why…what?” It reminds me a little too much of Ezra parroting my questions back at me when he does it, and I grit my teeth in frustration at my own reluctance and how strange the situation is.
“Why do you want to fuck me? You barely evenknowme anymore. I might be…the worst partner ever.”
“I’ve known you foryears,” Isaac says earnestly, resting his chin on his hands as he sits cross-legged on the sofa. “So that’s not a real argument, is it?”
“Well yeah but…” I trail off and snort. “Maybe I’m bad in bed.”
“Not likely.”
“That’s confident of you. Maybe I’mlazybetween the sheets, and I’ll make you do all the work.”
His answering grin and the dare in his eyes are enough of an answer for that one.
“Maybe I’m apillow princess,” I say finally. “And my kinkismaking you give me everything instead of giving it to you. Ever think of that?”
“Not really.” Isaac’s chuckle is soft and husky, and it does unfair things to my stomach when he talks like that. “I don’t really care what you are because you’reyou.”
“That’s so fucking sappy. You’re not Romeo, and I’m not Juliet. You don’t have to say shit like that,” I assure him with a groan. But his words make me feel like we’re in high school, and butterflies have launched themselves into action inside of me as I look at him.
I hate it.
I want to hate it, anyway. But it’s impossible to hate the way he makes me feel, even though he gives me chills sometimes with his possessive looks or the way it feels like I’m the center of hisworldwhen we’re together. He can’t feel like that, right? We’ve only been back in each other’s lives for a fewdays. It’s crazy to think that he can be in love with me, or I can be in love withhim, especially with all of the surrounding circumstances.
And the surrounding circumstances are truly overwhelming in a way that makes them impossible to ignore. HowcanI ignore any of what’s going on, even for the look on his face right now?