Page 47 of After All This Time

My lips quiver, attempting to myself back from smirking like crazy. “And I cried my ass off when Noah got a better grade than me on the final essay for English class during sophomore year in high school.”

“Oh, shut up. I deserved a way better grade than you. My essay was so much better than yours and you know it.”

“Did it hurt when I showed you my grade? Did it really hurt?”

She punches me in the arm.

“Ow! Dude, what the fuck?”

“Do I look like a dude to you?” She breathes out. “And that was for being a jackass. Now stop moving. Unless you want to bleed to death.”

I roll my eyes at her.

She tilts my head back a little to examine the cut on my forehead. We fall into an awkward silence for several minutes.

Fuck, her eyes are mesmerizing.

How have I never noticed them before? They’re dark brown and you can barely see her pupils because they’re so dark.

Hello, what am I saying?

Watching her prepare the items to clean my wound, I smile and shift my mouth to the side of my face.

This is when I start to feel her gaze on me.

She looks up and down at me repeatedly all while she’s trying her best to tend to my wound. “What?” She grabs a Q-tip, unscrewing the cap off the tube of antibiotic ointment and applying it to the wound on my forehead.

I look deep into her eyes. “How are you so good at this?”

She answers me without meeting my gaze. “My dad was very clumsy. He’d always injure himself. Whether that was cutting or hitting himself on something. I was his daughter turned self-trained nurse.”

Dani’s face lights up as she smiles at me.

Oh, I don’t know how to feel about this. Usually, when Dani smiled at me, it meant she had something planned up her sleeve. And now, it screams innocence.

I do wonder how I ever found her smile to be annoying.

It’s beautiful.

If I’m being honest here, she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid my eyes on. I’ve always thought that she was beautiful, but I could never tell her that. Not even now.

She stares at me. “What?”

I gulp. “You know I wanted to reach out to you multiple times over the last five years. I never did because I had a feeling you’d hate me even more than you already do.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“You don’t?”

“I just find you slightly irritating.”

I laugh which turns into me getting all choked up.

Her palm rests on top of my thigh, sending shivers down my spine. Looking away, my eyes are rapidly blinking as a physical response.

“Hey,” she says. “You’re going to be okay.”

This cannot be happening right now.

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