Page 107 of The Cost of Forgetting You

His gaze catches on my face, and I swear his eyes darken. Realistically, I must look like a drowned rat. But the way his throat is working? The way his breathing picks up? I feel more beautiful in this moment than I did an hour ago, sitting in front of my vanity with a full face of makeup.

My lips twitch, threatening to spread into a grin. “You gonna take them or what?”

“You know”—he swipes the bundle of clothes from my hand—“you’re entirely too tempting in that outfit.”

My brow lifts. “It’s a towel.”

“You heard me,” he says, and then he retreats without another word.

I finger comb my hair as best I can and don my underwear and bra. The sweatpants he laid out for me are way too big, so I roll them a few times over my hips and hope they’ll stay. There’s a faded Fly Hollow Rodeo T-shirt that does fit, mostly because it’s left over from his brief stint with the association back in middle school. It’s not polite to pry, but I find my gaze flitting around the room, noting the framed photographs of his mother on his dark wooden dresser. There’s one of us, too, with bony arms slung around equally knobby shoulders. A shit-eating grin on Truett’s face and one of pure adoration on mine, glancing up at my father behind the camera.

It was the day they let me jump off the riverbank all by myself for the first time. Even when Mom was certain I’d drown, Dad said, “Let her try.” Try I did, and the minute I hit the water, I started kicking, determined to prove I was strong enough to move myself out of the current. When I made it to Dad’s arms, Lucy and Truett erupted in applause. Dad looked down at me like a negative diagnosis from an oncologist.

A miracle when you were preparing for the opposite.

I tear my eyes away, full now in a way they weren’t before, and scan the rest of the room. There are a few discarded socks littering the floor, a raggedy cardboard box in the corner labeled Misc. Cords in Tru’s messy scrawl. His bed is made, which surprises me. I wonder if his pillows smell like him, but force myself not to check.

I pad out of the master bedroom, past the hall bath, which is still coated in steam from Truett’s shower, and find him standing over the stove, shimmying a frying pan. Shirtless, of course.

He’s turned slightly away, so I can only see the contours of his side profile. My gaze falls down his frame like rain, catching on all the ridges and gathering in the valleys. On his rib cage, the outlined bouquet of flowers flexes and pulls with each movement.

He glances up, jaw tightening when he catches sight of me in his clothes.

I panic, aware that he’s caught me staring, and blurt out the first thing that comes to mind. “Why do you still have a T-shirt from the eighth grade?”

He blinks a few times, resurfacing from whatever rabbit hole he’d fallen down in his thoughts.

“What?” I do a spin. “I think I pull off my dumb cowboy cosplay quite well.”

When he laughs, I breathe a sigh of relief. The smile opens his face up. He’s the Truett I know intimately. The happy-go-lucky boy who would laugh at any joke, no matter how shit it was.

I relax. That simmering awareness just beneath my skin eases. This version of him I can handle. It’s the one who was looking like he’d happily devour me that I don’t know how to navigate.

He shakes his head, clicking his tongue. “What am I gonna do with you?”

I climb onto a barstool and balance my chin on steepled fingers. “Preferably feed me.” The scent of butter and whatever else is in that pan has my mouth watering, more than what the sight of him was already doing.

He turns to look at me, one eyebrow crumpling his tanned forehead. His low-swung sweats perch on the precipice of his hips, leaving the broad expanse of his chest exposed all the way to the valley beneath his navel. He looks relaxed, amused, and far too attractive for my heart to withstand.

Perhaps kissing him was a terrible mistake, because now it’s all I seem to think about doing.

“Grilled cheese sound good?”

“Sounds delicious,” I say, groaning.

He holds up the spatula, wagging it at me. “Don’t make that noise.”

I don’t know what’s gotten into me. Maybe it’s the fact that I was just in his shower or the intimacy of this moment as a whole, but I find my spine straightening under the heat of his gaze. “And why not?”

A muscle in his jaw ticks. “You know, I had my hopes that I’d eventually get to see you moaning in my clothes, but didn’t think it’d happen this quickly. Keep it up and I won’t make it through dinner.”

My mouth pops open. I knew I was toeing the line, but he just jumped a few miles past it.

“What?” His head tilts, eyes wide. “I told you I’d do everything I could to prove I mean it when I say I want you. And part of that is being honest with how badly I do.”

I force myself to swallow past the lump in my throat. “I think the grilled cheese is burning.”

He reluctantly drags his gaze from mine, already moving the pan off the heat. The burner dies with a rattling click. There’s another sandwich to the side already plated. He passes me that one and sets the slightly burnt one on a paper plate in front of the barstool to my right, where he sits a second later.

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