Her emotions ran the gamut. Guilt, frustration, anger at herself for actually contemplating allowing Chase into her life, made Larke dizzy with confusion. His jaws hardened as she took the blanket from him. “You understand and agree with me, don’t you?”Please say you do and make this easy.
Instead of answering, he reached into his back pocket, withdrawing something that at first appeared white and shiny. Larke sucked in a breath as he held out his hand, allowing the pearl necklace to dangle below his finger.
“You kept it?” She opened her mouth, flabbergasted that the plastic pearls were as she’d remembered them. She’d assumed he’d thrown away her friendship gift.
“I planned on throwing it away after you gave it to me,” he said, “could never bring myself to go through with it, though. I kept it in a box at the back of my closet. I actually forgot about it for a couple of years until I saw you again.”
“Did you clean it,” she asked jokingly, trying to wrap her mind around this. “It looks a lot better than when I had it.”
His lips twitched into another half-smile. “I wiped it off last night. Didn’t think you’d be too impressed if I showed up with your necklace looking grungy.”
The smile fell from her lips. “You’ve known for a while that I come here in the mornings, haven’t you?” she asked gently without suspicion. “Were you watching me all the time, at my apartment too?”
“No.” A faint tinge of red stained the top of his cheeks. He backtracked. “I mean, okay. I did go back to your apartment building one morning. That’s when I followed you here. I never went back to your place. That I swear. I ain’t no stalker. I was only trying to figure out the best way to talk to you. That’s all. Like I said––it was never about trying to hurt you or anything.”
“Then why’d you wait this long to talk to me again?”
He shrugged a lean shoulder. “Because I’m stubborn. I didn’t wanna admit that the reason I haven’t been able to touch another female is because a black girl who’s afraid of me, got my mind all messed up and had me thinking about her all day long.”
Larke’s mind ceased functioning. She almost wished she could un-hear everything he’d just said. If she could, then she wouldn’t have to deal with her heart thumping wildly inside her chest or those ridiculous butterflies in her stomach fully awake and fluttering about like…complete madness. Her lower belly wouldn’t cinch with excitement at the idea of Chase constantly thinking about her.
Had he done so at nights too? The brazen question popped into her head before she could reel it in. But reel it in she would. Because as much as her body tingled and felt on the cusp of something…life altering, she still wished she hadn’t heard his words. They hurt. She was someone he hadn’t asked for or really wanted. His attraction to her was something he was being forced to endure. Feelings she had unintentionally provoked in him. Her. The black girl.
