Page 74 of Moving Forward

“I sure as hell hope not.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

MAX

I’m realizing Cain is obsessed with organization. It dawned on me somewhere in between him alphabetizing his cereal and distributing his furniture into stacks of keep, fix, and throw away, each with its own subcategories. He casts me a nervous smile as he puts one of his stools in the “fix” pile.

“Alright, this is embarrassing,” he admits.

I fall back onto his couch, giving him a rueful smile. “Nothing wrong with a man who keeps clean.”

“Except for the fact that I caused all of this damage,” he says, assessing what’s left, which isn’t much.

“We’ll work on that too. For now, just try to stop hulking out.”

He chuckles under his breath. “Great. Love being compared to the Jolly Green Giant with anger management issues.” He pauses and turns to me, one side of his lips quirked. “About sums me up, doesn’t it?”

“I’m not going to answer that.”

“You’re not going to deny it either. I see how you work, Peaches.”

I tilt my head. “Maybe that was an attempt at flirting with you. Being mysterious.”

He saunters over to me, scratching his chin. “If that’s the case, we really need to work on your flirting. Because that was just painful. And mysterious? Peaches, you wouldn’t be mysterious if I stuck you in a dimly lit room with a trench coat.”

I pout. “Thanks.”

He tangles his fingers through my hair as he kneels to my level. “I don’t want you to be mysterious. I like who you are . . . I like the adorable, sometimes awkward girl I’ve been getting to know. I’d take you over someone ‘mysterious’ any day.”

“So, you like that I’m boring.”

“I like,” he says, his lips inching toward mine, “that you’re you.”

He brushes his lips against mine and pulls back. “And by the way . . . the trench coat thing? Yeah, that wouldn’t be mysterious—but it’d be sexy as hell. Especially since you’d be naked under that trench coat and begging me to take you right there in that dark corner up against the wall.”

I shiver. He covers his mouth with mine, the kiss filled with passion and need. When his fingers snake their way farther into my hair, he jerks back and tilts my head down.

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