And my breath caught.
He had these eyes—hazel, I thought, or maybe green depending on the light—and they were looking at me with this mix of embarrassment and gratitude and something else I couldn’t quite name. His face was all angles, sharp jaw with a blondish five-o’clock shadow, and there was this little scar on his chin that I suddenly wanted to know the story behind.
“Thanks,” he said, and his voice was rough, like he’d been yelling or hadn’t had coffee yet or both.
“Yeah, sure,” I managed. “No problem.”
I handed him my stack of papers, and our fingers brushed.
It lasted maybe half a second.
It felt like longer.
We both froze, papers suspended between us, and I swear to God the world got quieter.
The traffic noise faded.
The sound of Ybor waking up around us dimmed.
There was just this moment of his fingers against mine and his eyes locked on my face and my brain forgetting how to form words.
What was my name again?
A clock tower somewhere nearby began to chime the hour.
The man’s eyes went wide. “Shit,” he breathed. “Shit, shit, shit, I’m so late.”
He grabbed the papers from my hands. It was less of a gentle take and more of a panicked yank. Then, without another word, he took off down the street at what could only be described as an awkward sprint-walk, his jacket flapping behind him.
I stood there on the sidewalk, surrounded by a few stray papers he’d missed, watching him disappear around the corner.
My heart was doing that thing again. The flutter thing.
It was definitely not a panic attack this time.
“What the hell was that?” I said to no one.
“That,” said a voice behind me, “was you getting hit by what looked like a very stressed lawyer.”
I spun around to find Mark standing there, grinning like he’d just witnessed the best entertainment of his life.
“How long have you been standing there?”
“Long enough to watch you get plowed by a man in a suit and then stare at his ass as he ran away.”
“I wasn’t—”
“Youwerestaring. He’s got a great ass, even in that crappy suit.” Mark glanced down the street as the guy vanished around a corner. “Did you at least get his name?”
Well, shit on a stick. I hadn’t.
“I was just—he dropped all his papers. I was helping—”
“Uh-huh.” Mark’s grin got wider.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you don’t.” Mark clapped a hand on my shoulder, heavy and warm and grounding. “Come on. Let’s go open a bar, big boy.”
