“Your entire apartment was spotless.”
“I like order.”
“Well, everything about me is disordered. And I don’t want you to come up. I’ll change fast and come right back down. Then you can drive me to the Neon Reef.”
“I want to see where you live.”
“You can come up.AfterI clean it up.”
He looked like he was about to refuse, so I batted my eyes. “Please, Kieran.”
He sighed. “Fine. Hurry up.”
I bounced forward, smacking a kiss against his scruff, and bolted from the car before he could argue.
CHAPTER
TEN
Kieran
It was official. I had lost my damn mind.
All my good senses went right down the drain with all the water and dirt from the plants Hazard had plunked right into my kitchen sink.
Cliff and Atlas.
Who the fuck named plants?
I heard what he told them, standing there in the sunshine in my living room, hugging two droopy, brown-tinged pots of leaves like they were his new best friends. As if their battle to live moved him.
Those who cling to life defy death.
Those whispered words hit me profoundly, shifting something inside me I had yet to understand. Wasn’t that the way with him, though? Making me do and say all kinds of things I never thought I would. I checked myself for that fever. I didn’t have one.
That meant this was all him.
I glanced toward the grungy building he’d disappeared into right after he kissed my cheek. The sweet, innocent gesture flipped me upside down. He’d run off like it had been nothing atall while I sat here and wondered if everything I’d believed was somehow a lie.
Deep down, I knew it wasn’t. Life had taught me otherwise. Peculiar, though, how a set of mismatched eyes and a kiss on the cheek could make me question it all.
My cell vibrated against my leg, and I pulled it out to glance at the screen. The number wasn’t familiar, but they never were. In my business, untraceable numbers were pretty much standard, which made answering the phone sort of like a game of Russian roulette.
I wasn’t in the mood today. I had more important things to deal with. I hit the reject button to silence the call. I had told myself I would take a few weeks off until my next job, and now I had even more reason to do so.
The reason? Currently rushing out of a building he had no business living in to begin with. There was an orange beanie pulled down over his hair.An excuse not to comb it.He’d exchanged his filthy jeans for clean ones that looked similar to the previous pair, faded and fraying at the hem. They were loose, which made me think about how he’d said he didn’t eat breakfast.
His sneakers were scuffed but otherwise adequate, and he had on a long-sleeved black T-shirt with a logo for the Neon Reef on the chest. It was in—wait for it—neon coloring.
He stepped off the curb to walk around the front of the SUV without even so much as a glance at the street. He pulled open the passenger door just as a car barreled down the street. The obnoxious blare of the horn as it whizzed around set my back teeth on edge.
Haz didn’t seem to notice he’d almost been mowed down, climbing inside.
“You need to watch where you’re going,” I snapped, my heart beating too fast.
He said nothing as if he hadn’t even heard me yell.
“Where’s your coat?” I grumped.
