He frowned at me. “Was the exam that important?”
“No, and they let me retake it anyway. I didn’t… I mean, I’ve never been in worse pain in my life, but at the time I was seventeen and not very smart. I told my dad, but I guess he didn’t realize how much pain I was talking about.”
“I don’t like your dad,” Xander said.
I didn’t really have a response to that.
“Thank you for trusting me, though,” he said.
Oh. Oh, he thought I’d been hiding thescar.
And not…
Everything else.
“I wasn’t keeping my shirt on because of that,” I said.
Xander frowned again.
I’d have to tell him. Well, no, that wasn’t true. I knew Xander would accept it if I didn’t tell him. But I wanted to, I wanted to trust him, and right now I felt like I could.
“My last boyfriend broke up with me because of…” I paused to take a breath, working out how to phrase what I wanted to say. “Because of what I looked like without a shirt on. Because I was, umm. Softer than I had been when we started dating. With all the stress.”
Xander’s face changed, the frown falling away, his eyes searching my face even as his fingers splayed over my skin, appendix scar forgotten.
“What the hell was wrong with him?” he asked after a pause.
All the knots in my gut unraveled at once, and despite everything, I laughed.
“Well, he was a political analyst,” I joked.
Xander wrinkled his nose. “Ew.”
I laughed again as we stood there, Xander’s hands still on me like he didn’t want them anywhere else, like none of it mattered to him.
Of course it didn’t. He’d been flirting with me since before he’d seen anything other than my hands and my sugar habit.
Of course it didn’t matter to him.
“I only have like twenty minutes to get in and out of the shower,” Xander said, pushing me toward it. “But remind me later that I wanted to kiss every inch of you.”
19
XANDER
“Saw Milo slippingout of the bakery this morning,” Dante said as soon as I approached the counter at Grinding.
“He left at—right when you start your shift,” I said, defeated, as I realized what time Milo hadactuallyleft. He’d stuck around post-shower, playing with the kittens, helping me around the bakery, and letting me make him breakfast.
Brady had never appreciated my egg and bacon sandwich with a cinnamon roll split in two as the bun, but Milo did. Of the two of them, Milo objectively had a better palate. That was just a fact.
“So that would be two lattes and two… hmm,” Dante paused to look in the cabinet. “I’d suck dick for one of the chocolate silk tarts.”
“Don’t let Harvey hear you say that,” Iggy said, slipping out of the kitchen. “He’ll die.”
“I…”
“Unless Milo doesn’t need any convincing?” Dante asked with a smirk.
