She’s still Bells. Still the same sharp and mouthy girl. Completely unfazed by the fact that she kissed the town’s resident asshole and didn’t spiral about it.
Thank fuck.
I reach up and move the strand of hair from her cheek, tucking it behind her ear. My knuckles brush her skin. She watches me with that steady blue gaze that always makes me feel as if she sees more than she lets on.
“You want breakfast?” she asks.
“I don’t usually eat breakfast.”
She squints at me. “Why not?”
“I have to choose what’s a priority with my pay.” I shrug, keeping it casual.
I can say this stuff to Bells and know that she won’t look at me with pity. Noah and Reece know I go without sometimes. I’vegot a suspicion she knows too. That’s probably why she’s always throwing food my way, pretending it’s no big deal.
“Well, that’s just depressing, Jace.”
I let out a soft laugh.
“You don’t know what you’re missing,” she says, already pushing herself upright.
She climbs off the couch and stretches her arms above her head. My mind briefly short-circuits as her sweater rides up inch by inch, revealing a strip of skin at her waist. Pale. Smooth. There’s a gentle dip where her waist curves inward before flaring out to her hips—a natural line. My eyes follow it before I can stop myself. An intense, reckless urge surges through me. I want to drag my lips across that strip of skin just to see what she would do.
Would she gasp?
Would she freeze?
Would she shove me back with a smart remark and a flushed face?
Fuck.
My pulse kicks up harder now. Hard enough that I feel it in my throat. My cock responds immediately, thick and eager, pressing against my jeans as if it has its own damn agenda.
She drops her arms, sweater falling back into place, and my brain attempts to reboot.
Too late.
The image is seared into my memory.
Bells grabs her glasses from the small table and walks toward the kitchen as if she hasn’t just set my entire nervous system on fire.
And I’m left lying here, trying to remember how to breathe, wondering how the hell a strip of bare skin can hit harder than any naked body ever has.
And that is an entirely different level of terrifying.
“Coffee first,” she calls out over her shoulder.
I follow her.
That’s the thing about Bells. She just moves, and somehow I end up orbiting her anyway. As if she’s got some quiet spell wrapped around my ribs, and I’m too far gone to fight it.
I sit on the bench while she digs through a cabinet.
“I don’t know how to make pancakes,” she says. “I can make toast. That’s about all I’ve got in me.”
“Toast’s good,” I say.
I’d eat cardboard if she handed it to me.
