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I have not, it turns out, finished looking.

Nineteen times.

That’s cute.

I spent years convincing myself I was perfectly capable of living without this—without distraction, without attachment, without wanting someone badly enough to lose sleep over it.

Then Serena walked into my life looking at me like she was equal parts intrigued and annoyed by my existence, and suddenly my self-control has the structural integrity of wet drywall.

Serena Harper is a hazard to my fucking health.

I close the laptop. “You are remarkably comfortable saying things that are difficult to interpret innocently.”

I can practically see the wicked little wheels turning behind her eyes. “You wouldn’t believe the things I don’t say out loud.”

If I was the kind of man who let silences breathe, this would be the place to do it. I am not that man.

I uncross my arms and stand, leaning against the edge of the desk and watching her over the rim of my glasses.

“Nineteen,” I repeat, because it’s the only thing I can say that won’t sound like an admission.

She shrugs. “It’s a consensus average. I’m sure outliers exist.”

There is a static charge building in the air, the kind of slow, hot burn that prefaces a thunderstorm.

She’s waiting for me to say something reckless. Or honest. Or both.

Something hits me with terrifying clarity.

Serena is going to figure me out.

Not because she’s trying to. It’s just what she does. She watches. She classifies. She notices the things everyone else lets slide right past them.

And for reasons I should probably find more concerning, I want to let her.

She uncrosses her legs and sets her feet flat on the mattress, the notebook folding closed on her lap as she leans back on her hands. “Are you not going to ask me how many times I think about it?”

I am going to regret this entire conversation. “Do you want me to ask you?”

I’m so fucking out of practice it’s embarrassing. I have the game of a nervous teenager.

Her answer is a study in micro-expressions: a flush beginning high on her cheeks, her mouth curving at one corner.

She knows exactly what she does to me.

Three steps puts me directly in front of her. Her chin lifts, just slightly, her eyes bright with challenge beneath her lashes.

I sit beside her on the edge of the bed, steel myself for what I’m about to say.

“How many times per day do you think about fucking, Serena?” I ask, letting the implication do most of the work.

She leans forward. “I think about it way more than nineteen times a day,” she says. “Especially when you wear those glasses.”

She reaches up and taps one corner, letting her fingertip trail along the frame before pulling away.

I can’t help it. I laugh. It is a short, sharp, almost involuntary thing. It makes her smile—real, wide, unguarded.

The moment is suspended, balanced perfectly between before and after, and I do not know which side I want to fall on more.