I dropped my eyes to where his clothes sat in a neat pile. “There,” I said, gesturing toward the floor. “Hope that’s good.”
“Sweet! Thank you.” He started to reach for it but hesitated when he couldn’t do so without exposing himself. “Could you just...?”
“Towel around the waist is customary,” I pointed out.
“This is the only one in here,” he argued, shaking the towel he used to dry his hair. “You need to do laundry.”
“Sorry, been too busy spelunking.”
“Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”
I rolled my eyes and picked up his clothes. “For the love of God, just... there, take them,” I said, shoving them toward him while averting my gaze.
“Damn, Paige. My eyes are up here, you know.”
I glanced up—I couldn’t help it—and as my eyes lifted, I caught the smallest glimpse of his bare hip, just a sliver of skin peeking out from behind the door. He shifted farther inside thebathroom, and that sliver disappeared. But I saw it. Hip.Side hip.Was that a thing?
My face warmed before words finally came. “I wasn’t looking at anything.”
“It’s a pretty good view, I’ve been told.” He gripped the edge of the door, offering to open it. “If you want to look, I wouldn’t blame you.”
My face was on fire. An oven. A forge. The heat from a million dying stars. “Starting to think you reallyweretrying to cop a feel in the cave,” I managed to say.
“Paige, I swear on Wyrd Jack’s ‘Prison Poem’ that I really didn’t mean to do that. Come on. If I really wanted to touch you, you’d know it.”
“Oh?” I wished I didn’t sound so breathless, but I could feel my pulse in my swollen ankle, and the pain wasn’t helping my nerves. “Is that right?”
He tapped the edge of the door several times, then blue eyes flicked toward mine, and he stared at me with an intense, dangerous look I’d never once seen on his face in all the years I’d known him. “You’d have to want me to. That’s the first thing.”
Warm chills raced over my skin. Was he suggesting I give him permission... ? A riot of panic-adjacent emotions broke out inside my chest. Maybe I was confused again. He was only running his mouth, and I was more shaken by that flooded cavern than I’d previously thought.
“Get dressed, asshole,” I said, turning away from the bathroom.
“If you insist,” he called behind me as I hobbled back to my room.
I didn’t respond. I just stood against the wall in my bedroom—the same wall that separated me from the bathroom, exhaling a shaky breath.
Everything was fine.
I was not thirsting for my childhood friend.
Even if I had to tell myself that a thousand times before it sank in.
Chapter 9
I heard Seb banging around in the bathroom for a bit while he got ready, then he shouted at me again, “Hey, while you’re in the shower, I’ll head outside and take a look at the Corvair. Is the key to the garage still behind the tin Texaco sign?”
“Surprised you remembered,” I called back, hoping my voice sounded normal.
“Mind like a bear trap.”
“Mind like a bear caught in a bear trap.”
“Just because some of us didn’t get into Ivy Leagues doesn’t mean we’re all dummies, you know. At the very least, I’m smarter than my dog. Usually.”
“Speaking of,” I called out, sitting on the edge of my bed to dig inside my chest of drawers for a change of clothes. “Where does Punkin stay when you’re at work, or whatever?”
“Different places. Sometimes at Mandy’s Dog Rescue.”
