"I agree."
I bite my lip. "Alec’s cheating on Freya."
He clears his throat. "Yes."
"It's normal in your world, but as much as I am a part of your world, I'm not going to turn the other cheek like she does because she wants to live in France and he's going to move there once he graduates to further his career."
"I'm not Alec," he replies softly. "And you're not Freya."
He’s right. We're not. But I still had to lay down the rules.
Fool me once, shame on me…
But, now that I’ve warned him, I gingerly press my hand to his knee.
When his fingers scurry to meet mine, turning my palm over so that he can slide ours together, I feel how clammy they are.
It should be unappealing, but if anything, it's reassuring.
Much like that stutter of his, it lays him bare.
My chronically cool best friend is sweating.
Because of me.
But as our digits tangle, I feelsomethingas I drag my thumb over them. "When did you bust up your knuckles?"
He grunts. "Got into a fight in the locker room. It doesn't matter. Dyers was being a dick."
"If you looked in the dictionary under Derek Dyers, you'd have a picture of him with a penis on his head."
"A soft one."
"Yeah. No chubby in sight."
I grin, gleeful when he cackles.
I'm such a goner!
His laughter fades, drifting into an intense expression that makes me want to squirm. I guess I’ve seen that face before, when we’re at a club and he’s about to bone his girl of the night, but it’s skewed now.
Perhaps because I never expected to see that look aimed my way?
The notion hurts my heart, but I try not to be dumb. This is already so much more than…
It’s all so out of the blue and?—
“I can hear your mind working.”
“You can’t hear it,” I chide.
“Sure, I can. Know you as well as you know me, Denny.” When he tucks a lock of hair behind my ear, I shiver as his thumb traces a path over my cheek. Then he gently presses my earlobe, and that faint pressure has the need to squirm building up again. “What are you thinking?”
He really doesn’t want to know the answer to that question.
He wouldn’t like it…
Especially as what I’m thinking is that he’d be a great guy to lose my virginity to.
