“No, I don’t.” I grab more items, helping him fill the bags. “Nor am I usually this snappy. I’m sorry.” I motion with my eyes and a nod to the clerk, indicating Rhys should follow my lead and apologize to him.
He doesn’t.
Fucking antiheroes and their arrogance.
Chapter Nine
“Remind me. This is what you call science fiction.” Rhys points to the television where the Guardians of the Galaxy have recently escaped from Kyln. “Raccoons and trees can’t actually speak.”
“No.” I pop the spoon out of my mouth. After swallowing the cookies-and-cream ice cream, I explain, “Technically, yes, this is science fiction, but specifically, it’s Marvel. That also makes it a comic book movie, and that’s a whole other thing entirely.”
“Interesting,” he says with a hint of a mischievous smile playing on his extremely kissable lips.
I narrow my eyes suspiciously. “But you knew that, didn’t you?”
We’re on opposite ends of the couch, our feet propped up on the coffee table, chilling, watchingGuardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1. I’m halfway through a pint of ice cream, and he’s killing the bowl of popcorn on his lap (corn, with ac). There’s nothing sluttier than a man in gray sweatpants and a white tank, and goddamn, he’s fine as fuck wearing them. “Yes, Charlotte, I know animals can’t speak.”
I set my ice cream on the table before tossing a decorative pillow at him, not even caring that it knocks a bunch of popcorn out of the bowl. “No one likes a teaser.”
“I would think that depends on who’s doing the teasing.” He throws the pillow back at me, hitting me square in the face. “And how you’re being teased.”
Okay, wow. Rhys pivoted this in a totally different direction—which explains why my mouth is suddenly dry and my vagina is wet when it’s been the other way around for years.
“I see what you did there. The whole double entendre thing.” I shoot him with finger guns because I’m not awkward at all. “Good one, dude.”
The room feels intimate under only the glow of a lone lamp across the living room and the light from the television. The outside world seems eons away, leaving just the two of us. Movie night was his idea, possibly because I listed this as one of my ideal date preferences on The Book Boyfriends. I don’t think either of us expected his inner movie buff to surface, but here we are.
I’m trying not to read too much into him falling wildly in love with Marvel (Drax the Destroyer is his favorite character), but afterIron Man, we skipped ahead toCivil War. He wanted more, so we jumpedtoGuardians.
Rhys is obviously hooked.
He also has a sense of humor.Huh. That’s unexpected. A nice touch against the backdrop of that boatload of arrogance.
We pause the movie to collect the pieces of stray popcorn that flew out of the bowl, and while we do, I work up the courage to say, “May I ask you a question?”
“You can ask me anything, Charlotte.”
Curiosity has been burning a hole in my brain. “How does this whole thing work? What are you, Rhys?”
“I don’t understand the question.”
“Yes, you do,” I whisper.
He drops the last of the popcorn in the bowl before slicing me with those intense eyes. The muted lights play off the angles of his face, giving him a shadowy, almost otherworldly aura. “Am I a toy, a glorified robot? No, Charlotte. I’m my own person. You may have picked the parts that Frankensteined me together, but I’m not an extension of you.”
“I see.” I think for a long moment, chewing the inside of my cheek with the ice cream curdling in my stomach as I try to understand this insane situation Rhys and I are tangled in. “You have free will.” At his curt nod, I press on. “You can leave anytime you want.”
He nods to the front door. “I can walk right out.”
I look down, staring at my hands folded on my lap. “Why don’t you?”
“Why would I?”
“Why stay?” I ask with a shrug.
Rhys slides closer to me. The air seems to get sucked out of the room. “Because you’re here, Charlotte.”
“But you only have a few days. Why spend them with me?” I want to take back the reminder and keep him all to myself, but that’s unfair. I was trapped in a miserable marriage, and although my cage was a fancy house in a gated community, it was still a prison. How dare I want to clip someone else’s wings when they have every right to fly?
