He laughed, but his eyes were pensive. Watching me carefully. “Why don’t you show me your camera roll, then?”
My pulse flickered. As I tried to get it under control, I folded the tripod. “Maybe I’m trying to help you.” Damn it, this piece of metal never bent to my will. “Your pictures aren’t very good.”
Noah reached for the tripod, and without a second thought, I handed it to him. “Not sure if I’d agree with that. They get plenty of likes and saves.”
I didn’t want to think about who was saving his shirtless selfies.
The metal of my tripod bent under Noah’s hands like it was water tipping out of a kettle.Well, I loosened it for him.
“That’s due to the subject, not the technical quality,” I grumbled as I accepted the folded tripod.
Whatever I expected in retaliation from Noah, it wasn’t silence. Once the contents of my bag were packed, I stood to his level. Well, as close to his level as I could get considering he was a head taller than me.
From this angle, the lake surface next to us was like glass, reflecting the pastel colors of dawn—soft pinks, purples, and oranges.
That same soft pink covered the top of Noah’s ears.
Was Noah…flustered? I would have thought that a half-hearted compliment would be a drop in the sea of praise he received each day.
Instead of latching onto my words, he breezed over them entirely. He took a step forward, his left ankle shaking as he did. A flash of pain bolted across his face as he exhaled.
“Noah, what’s wrong with your ankle?”
“Nothing,” he grunted. “I just need to run home and put some ice on it.”
I gently pushed at his shoulders, ushering him to the bench on the side of the trail. “Running is the last thing you should be doing. Especially on hard terrain like this.” When he relented and sat down, I squatted in front of him. “Let me look.”
“What?” He moved his ankle out of my reach and asked hesitantly, “Why?”
“Because you’re in pain.”
“It’s not that bad.”
In lieu of a response, I poked his ankle. He hissed a breath between his teeth, eyes fluttering shut.
“Did you hurt it during another fight?”
I wasn’t the only person Noah had gone viral for fighting with, though I’d only seen a few quick clips of the famous fight he had last year with a food blogger.
He stayed unnervingly still as I wrapped my hand around his ankle and lifted it carefully to examine. I could have sworn he wasn’t even breathing—until he broke the silence with, “No. I’ve only been in one fight. It just looks like a million, thanks to the magic of online editing.”
I raised an eyebrow, barely suppressing a smirk. “Well, at least you won.”
Noah gave a half-hearted shrug. “I guess. But the stuff people said about it was bullshit. Everyone made it sound like I was some kind of scary wild animal.”
“I wonder why they would say that.” I chuckled.
He rolled his eyes, then rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. “I did throw a few punches, okay? But it wasn’t for the reasons people thought. A food blogger was running his mouth about this guy Kenny, a genuine dude who was trying to get into food influencing. And this jerk called Kenny a ‘fat wannabe’ and said he’d never make it in the industry. So yeah, I lost it a little.”
I blinked, surprised by the turn of events. “Wait—so youweren’tthe bad guy?”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” he said. “I was just defending Kenny’s honor.”
“Why didn’t you tell people that?”
“It’s hard to sell the bad boy angle when the truth is you were sticking up for a shy guy,” Noah said, a wry grin pulling at his lips.
“On the contrary, I think that makes you seem pretty badass.”
