I scoff. “Girl snuck up on me in the shower,” I say, recalling the incident.
“Maybe she just wanted a taste of you,” Andi taunts.
“She’s lucky I didn’t break her fucking camera,” I reply.
Andi snorts, and I lift a brow her way.
“What?”
“Whenever they told me what happened, that was exactly what I wanted to say,” she says. “I could see you taking her camera and destroying it with your bare hands, then laughing in her face.”
“I still laughed in her face when James found out,” I say.
Andi leans against the counter. “I’m surprised you’ve continued wearing the mask all this time. After your dad died, I thought you might let it slide some.”
Fuck, I wish she hadn’t brought him up.
I run my hand through my hair and scratch my neck, and she straightens.
“Shit. I’m sorry, Maddox,” she says in haste. “Sorry. Being back here has everything stirring up inside me. I have like word vomit, and then seeing you—and Reed—I feel like I suddenly don’t know when to shut up. You might have to gag me this week.”
My brow lifts, the joke helping to settle me back in this timeframe. Yet, there’s something else she said that has my full attention, that ignites a fire in my restless muscles.
“What do you mean ‘seeing me’?” I ask.
“I mean…” She fumbles with her fingers, that anxious little smile flickering on her lips. “I mean, you’re not… it’s been five years,” she says with an exhausted breath. “We were at Reed’s college graduation the last time I saw you. You both still had your long hair and… and now…” Her voice drifts, and I feel my curiosity getting the better of me.
“Now what?”
“Now you’re… god,lookat you, Maddox.”
A nervous laugh leaves her, and I can practically feel my lips curling upward.
“Go on,” I urge her, hoping to draw out everything I can get.
She gives me a flat yet mildly amused stare. “You’re just not who I expected to see beneath the mask,” she says.
I reach into my bag and pull out the mask she’s talking about, letting the fabric fall over my arm as I hold it up. “Would you feel more comfortable if I put the mask on?”
“No,” she says a little too quickly. “I mean, maybe—no,no, Maddox. Don’t you dare.”
She reaches out to pause me as I start to push it over my head, and a quiet laugh escapes me.
She’s never been this flustered in front of me before. Mildly, sure. Never this bad. I can see a few splotches of red creeping up her chest and neck, and it makes me wonder if the rest of her body does this when she’s unnerved.
I shouldn’t be wondering this.
I shouldn’t be thinking of the rest of her body as if I have any chance of ever touching it… tasting it…claimingit…
I barely realize I’m staring at her hips when I hear her clear her throat.
This time, it’s her who’s watching me with a poignant, raised-brow stare, and I snicker when I meet her dark eyes.
“My eyes are up here,” she says deliberately, and I want to kiss that fucking smirk off her pouting lips.
“Sorry,” I force myself to say. “It’s been five years for me, too—though I have seenyouon social media.”
“Oh, yes. I’ve seen your comments,” she says with a tilt of her head.
