CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Austin
Aw, bull-crap. This shitain’t goin’ down the hatch. There she is looking at me, just waiting for me to gag this mouthful up. I can’t let that happen.
She’s smiling because she knows I still haven’t swallowed this bite and it’s getting worse by the second since the ice cream part is melting, and the grasshopper chunk isn’t.Just do it.
I push the thing down, imagining that I feel it bounce from side to side in my esophagus until it hits the pit of my hollow stomach. I think I might be sweating.
“That was lip-smackin’ good,” I tell her as a bitter aftertaste fills my mouth.
“Your turn,” I tell her. I’m feeling slightly bad, maybe guilty, but I’ll only feel bad if she actually goes through with it. I don’t think she has the balls to, though. She was already dead set against it, so I doubt me taking one for the team has any effect on her decision.
“Fine,” she says. No way. I’m not buying it.
She struggles with the spoon because she can’t use her other hand with the slight bit of mobility she’s been left with. “Want help?” If she didn’t hear the guilt peppered through my question, she might actually go through with this.
“Do you mind?” she asks.
“Do you want the spoon or the cup?”
“I’ll hold the cup,” she says.
She wants me to spoon feed her the grasshopper. I take the spoon and scoop it into the cup she’s holding. “Ready?” I ask.
I can’t do this to her.
“Yup,” she answers right away and opens her mouth enough to feed her the spoonful.
I extend my arm out, just to the point where the spoon is hovering between her lips. I hold it there, debating whether to let her off the hook or make her suffer. I just can’t do this to her, though. “Okay, you know what—” She wraps her lips around the spoon and pretty much inhales the contents. She swallows it almost immediately and licks her lips. “You’re right, not bad.”
She’s kidding. She’s going to puke in like five seconds. “Do you need a chaser?” I ask.
“No, why?” She looks at me like I’m crazy.
“Just askin’.”
“My turn,” she says. “I need that pamphlet thing with the map and ice cream booth directory.” I’m still in shock over what I just witnessed, and Scarlett’s looking for the small stand full of maps. She finds it and runs over to grab one, then returns with intensity in her eyes. I watch as she studies the list, and the only thing I’m hoping right now is that there is nothing worse than Grasshopper Mint ice cream. “Okay, got it. It’s in the third row.” She counts a few boxes in on the map. “Fourth table in.”
“All right, bruiser, what’s it called?”
“You’ll see,” she says with a jiggle of her brows.
We head in the direction of the next aisle over, and my mind is churning on whether I should grab her hand again. It wouldn’t be to get where we’re going any faster, and that was my initial intention when we first got here. However, after a moment of holding her hand, my thoughts sort of took a sharp turn into a different direction—a direction of attraction rather than the excitement of this daredevil game we’re playing.
“You’re walking too slow. Speed it up,” she says. Scarlett, the bruiser who can clearly see eye to eye with me like no one I’ve met before grabs my hand and pulls me to move faster. This chick has me melting—and aching—because part of me is confident I am not good enough to get any closer to her than I currently am. The other part of me is praying that the angels above are keeping me in their sights and wanting good things for my poor lonely soul.
Scarlett’s hand is half the size of mine but she’s got a grip that shows confidence, a sexy amount of confidence. It’s oozing from her, and I love it.
“Here,” she says as we arrive at the booth.
“No, no way. Scarlett, I don’t think you know what this is.”
“Oh, I do. There was a short description on the pamphlet.”
“Scarlett, I know you’re all about payback, but this isn’t a good idea.”
“Hi,” she says to the vendor. “Could I have two samples of your Cold Sweat?”
