I sit forward and pull my feet out of his lap. He pouts until I put my bottom in it instead. I take his face in my hands and look into his eyes. “I like you a lot,” I whisper.
“Not in love with me yet, though?” he whispers back, but his hands wrap around my hip and lock beside me, holding me close to him.
“Not yet,” I say.
He rubs his nose against mine in gentle little sweeps up and down, his eyes closed. My lips are so close to his that I can almost taste him. But suddenly, he picks me up and plops me down on the couch. He stands up, adjusts his jeans, and kisses my forehead. “I have to go,” he says quickly.
“What?” I sputter. I was about to kiss him.
“Thanks for letting me hang out with the kids tonight. It was a lot of fun bowling with your family.”
I suddenly feel empty, and I don’t like it. “Thanks for dropping everything when Seth called you. And for the pizza.” And thanks for flipping my world upside down.
I stand up and follow him to the door. He looks down at me from the doorway and brushes my hair back behind my ear. “I want to kiss you.”
“You totally should,” I toss back.
He shakes his head. “Not yet,” he says. “Are you working from home tomorrow?”
“No, I have to go in to the office.” I have a big case that I’ve been working on, and we need to have team meeting.
“When can I see you again?” he asks.
I can’t bite back my grin. “When do you want to see me again?”
“Every day, all day.” He laughs. God, when that man smiles, he could knock me to my knees. “Can I call you?”
I nod.
“Good,” he says.
He turns and walks away from me. I step out into the hallway and call toward his back. “That’s it?” I ask.
“For now,” he calls back, but he’s laughing. He waves at me as the elevator doors close, and I sag back against the wall.
That wasn’t very nice. But I’m grinning when I go back into the apartment.
Matt
God, that was hard. I’ve never wanted to kiss anyone so much in my life. But she’s not ready for me. I can tell. She’s not ready for the kind of want I have inside me. Hell, I’m not sure I’m ready for it, either. But I want to be, and that’s a good place to start.
I have a little spring in my step on the way back to Reed’s. I feel bad leaving the way I did earlier, right in the middle of a tattoo. But Seth needed me, and to be honest, I wanted to see Sky.
It’s hard to admit that with everything I’ve been given in life, I haven’t appreciated it enough. I’ve gotten second and third chances that most people will never have. But even after all that, I’ve just been coasting. She makes me want to do more than coast. She makes me want to pedal hard.
I walk into the shop, and I’m glad when I just see Logan and Pete. Logan is two years younger than me, but he’s wicked smart. Pete’s the youngest, barely twenty-one, but he’s in a serious relationship just like Logan, and I want to pick their brains a little.
“Everything okay?” Logan asks. Logan is deaf, but his speech is excellent, so he speaks to us. When we talk back to him, we sign and speak at the same time so he doesn’t miss anything. Logan didn’t talk for years, not until he met Emily and she made him open his mouth. Now he rarely shuts up.
“Fine,” I reply. “I just went over to Skylar’s.”
Pete’s eyes narrow at me. “What the f**k happened to your nose?” he asks.
I look in the mirror over the sink. The skin under my eyes is a little purple, and I imagine there’s a good chance I’ll have two black eyes by tomorrow morning.
“Skylar hit me,” I say.
Pete snorts. “Shut the f**k up,” he says when I just look at him. “She really hit you?”
“It was an accident,” I say. “We were playing Wii bowling, and the controller flew out of her hand.” I touch my nose. It actually hurts like a motherfucker.
“You’ll have to marry her,” Logan says. “It’s a rule.” But he’s laughing. I’m not.
“Yeah, I am kind of headed in that direction,” I say. I don’t look at either of them because I feel like they’ll see right through me. They always have been able to.
“What?” Logan rolls his chair over toward me so he can look directly at me.
“You saw what I said,” I say.
He arches his brow. “I just want to be sure I saw it right.”
I shove his chair with my foot, and he skids across the floor. “You saw it right.”
“Already?” Pete says. He sits down across from me. “You just met her.”
“How long was it before you knew you wanted Reagan?” I ask. I can’t shove Pete away because he’s not on wheels.
“Seconds,” he says. He doesn’t even blink.
I look at Logan. “And you?” I ask.
“I never wanted Reagan,” Logan says. Pete punches him in the arm, and he throws up his hands in surrender. “Minutes.” He looks at me. Logan has this way of looking into your soul. He has to read people based on their body language, and I’m afraid he’s reading all of mine. “Wow,” he breathes. “You like her that much.”
I nod. “Yeah.” I scoff. “I’m not in love with her or anything”—I might as well be honest—“but I can’t get her off my mind.”