“Is it hot in here? Maybe we should open a window,” I say, searching around the room before I remember: it’s an interior wall.
“Don’t deflect,” he says with that look. The same serious one he used last night when he was out of it. Saying things he doesn’t remember. Things he probably didn’t mean.
I think I like being around you.
“You can’t do what?” I question back.
He maps my eyes in a zigzag pattern. “Forget it ever happened.”
I let out a frustrated puff of air. “Why not? And why do you call me Red all the time?”
He presses in closer, my body flush to his now.
“Because. You’re the only woman who doesn’t hide your blush under my stare.”
He crowds me against the cool cement wall.
YOU.WILL.NOT.BLUSH. I repeat the command inside my head. But I already feel it. The warmth creeping up my neck and radiating across my cheeks. He’ssoclose, his lips inches from mine, and I actually let my eyes fall prey to them once. He exhales, and I can taste the scent of peppermint from his parted lips.
Did he brush his teeth in the medic wing too? How long has he been up?
“I already have a hard enough time focusing on this job just knowing you’re in the other room,” he whispers. “I didn’t need to know what you look like naked too.”
My heart is galloping in my chest. Crossing a finish line I didn’t sign up to race.
I swallow and rapidly blink. “It’s nothing you haven’t seen before, right?” Even as I ask that question, I contemplate how many women he’s seen naked. I have nothing from his past to base my answer from, but I get the vibe that he’s a player.
His eyes flit back and forth between mine. The heat of his hands sear into my sides, and suddenly, I feel like my shirt has caught fire. He leans in an inch closer for a second as we share each other’s air. I can see it in his eyes. He’s warring with himself over something. The way he’s pushing his forearms into the wall behind me like he depends on them for support. But then he pulls away just enough to free his hand and pinch the base of his neck.
“Right.”
Why is he agreeing with me if he looks like he doesn’t want to be? At least a hundred different questions surface as I study that look.
Whatever cataclysmic spell we were both under breaks the moment he takes yet another step back, and I seize the opportunity to slip past him.
“Let’s just push it out of our minds. Not make this a bigger deal than it has to be, okay? I don’t want to forever remember your look of horror when you walked in here.”
He grabs me by the wrist one more time, his thumb dragging across my pulse. “It wasn’t a look of horror. I had to fight to stare at that ceiling,” he says.
I can’t fan my face as it flushes beneath his gaze, so I touch my cheeks instead. But even my palms are hot and do nothing to help. I need to get out of here!
I dodge past the threshold expecting to find an entire crew of onlookers waiting in the hallway. Butno one is out here. No one is up yet. I’m back to sneaking around in order not to wake anyone else.
I chance one last glance through the crack as the door falls shut, but he’s already gone.
The spray of the shower sounds seconds later with his words trailing across my mind like they’re attached to a banner on the back of a small plane.
I had to fight to stare at that ceiling.
I told him not to make it a big deal, butthat?
Now we’re so far past a big deal we’re a whole brush fire.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
REED
12 years old
