“God, do you have to say such awesome things?”
“Well, I could take it back if you like.Replace it with something less devastating.”
“Oh honestly, I’m not devastated. Devastation is something that happens to other people, in movies, after something ridiculously traumatic happens. Like, a doctor coming out to tell Julia Roberts that her whole family has cancer all at the same time.”
Go with the joke, she willed him.
Go with it, go with it, go with it.
Then he did, and yet, somehow, it wasn’t the relief she was expecting.
Noneof the conversation that followed was the relief she was expecting.
“Probably after she escapes her abusive husband on a bus,” he said, tone just a little different to anything she’d heard before. It was warmer and looser, in a way she suddenly wanted to resist. But somehow, she just couldn’t.
Not when he was actually making up crazy movies with her.
“That will explode if it goes below fifty miles an hour.”
“During an earthquake caused by Robert Duvall.”
“I would have gone with Christopher Walken.”
“Nah, Walken is the red herring in act one.”
“Ah. So, Duvall is the friendly police chief who secretly did it all.”
“He wanted to destabilize the government so he coul—”
She cut him off before he could finish. She had to.
Somehow, joking like this was worse than him saying sweet things.
It made her think of crazy words, likebanterandflirting.
Even though they weren’t. She wasn’t. She couldn’t.
“I should probably get going,” she said.
And sagged when he just accepted it.
Everything was going to be fine. It was all fine. She could go home and cool off, and come to the next meet up in the right frame of mind. A calm, reasonable state of mind, with no ideas of flirting he wasn’t doing or concerns about feelings she wasn’t having.
Or so she thought. But then he suddenly said: “You want a ride?”
And though she wanted to say no…
Somehow a yes came out instead.
Chapter Six
She just knew his car would be too cool for her to handle. But by god, nothing could have prepared her forhowcool. In her head, she pictured muscle cars he’d restored himself from scratch and things with flames down the side, but he’d gone way above and beyond that. In fact, she could barely suppress her glee when he went to unlock the only car she wouldn’t have predicted.
He had a Mini Cooper.
A worn down and somewhat ramshackle old blue thing that protested when he tried to open the passenger door for her and wouldn’tstart on the first try. He had to let it rest for a while before going again—and oh, that was really not good for her. It gave her way too much time to look over the insides of his car, and uncover brand new things about him. And, of course, all of the things were amazing.
Like the smell that hung thick in the air, sharp with leather and sweet with cinnamon.His smell, she thought, then immediately tried to wipe the idea from her brain. It was too weird that she was making that connection. Or even worse—that she had made that connectionbeforenow. As if she’d been surreptitiously sniffing him during their sessions, instead of focusing on the stuff he was saying.
