No, we need to focus. Work first, sex later.
I shove my laptop toward him. “Check this out. I found a really great study on how fragmentation affects distribution. I meant to send it to you last night, but I fell asleep.”
He turns the screen and his eyes go round.
The text is dense, so I get it, but it only took me a couple of minutes to read through it and I was practically a zombie.
“Talk about a mood killer.” He rakes his fingers through his hair and clasps them behind his neck as he reads.
Ten minutes later, he’s still going and I’m getting antsy because I have nothing to keep me occupied. I could listen to an audiobook, but that feels like a dick move since he’s actually working.
“About done there?”
Parker’s cheeks flush—something I’ve never seen outside of the bedroom—and he mutters, “Sorry. I’m a slow reader.”
“No need to apologize.” And then, because I feel like a Grade-A asshole, I add, “I’m shit at math.”
He snorts, but keeps his gaze locked on the laptop before him. “I find that hard to believe.”
“Why?” We’ve never shared a math class, so whatever his opinion is based on, it’s not facts.
“Your entire sport is built on a point system.” He scrolls down, still not meeting my eyes. “I’m just saying you don’t have to diminish your capabilities because you feel bad for me. It’s not a competition.”
His words are clipped and carefully controlled. I’m not sure if it’s embarrassment or anger, but I don’t like it. We haven’t bickered in weeks—a side-effect of all the orgasms—so where the hell is this coming from?
“I never said it was a competition.” I cross my arms, turning his words over in my head. Maybe I should let it drop, but the accusation doesn’t sit right. “Last time I checked, we’re supposed to be a team.”
“Exactly.”
Dios mío.For a smart guy, he’s being awfully dense.
“Teammates are supposed to lift each other up, not drag each other down.”
He turns to me, shoulders rigid. “So now I’m dragging you down?”
“That’s not—” I huff out a breath and a strand of my hair goes flying. “Don’t twist my words. You know what I meant.”
He makes a dismissive sound and I grab his biceps before he can dive back into the article.
“I’m not sure what’s going on here, but as long as you write your half of the paper and do it well, we’re good.” I quirk a smile. “Though I could do without the defensive prick routine.”
“Fair enough.” Parker exhales and rolls his shoulders. “It’s possible I overreacted.”
I arch a brow.
“Okay, I definitely overreacted.” He scrubs a hand over his face, looking anywhere but at me. “It’s kind of a sore subject.”
“Want to talk about it?”
It’s a stupid question. If he wanted to talk about it, he wouldn’t have bitten my head off, right?
Wrong.
“I’m…dyslexic.” He pauses, as if waiting for a reaction, but I’ve got nothing because I had no idea. “When I read something technical like this,” he says, gesturing to the laptop, “I need to read it slowly, and often more than once, to make sure I’ve got the meaning right.”
And, like a pendejo, I’d been rushing him. “If I’d known—”
A muscle in his jaw tics. “Don’t.”
