Page 32 of Tell Me It’s Right

“All day?”

I shrug. “Don’t have much of a choice.”

“That sounds awful.”

I press the ice pack to a different spot higher up on my head.

“Is me talking to you making it worse?” he asks when I don’t respond.

“No,” I admit. “You’re actually…distracting me a bit.”

“I’ve been told I can be very distracting. Here!” There’s rustling on the nightstand, and I peek out to see what he’s fishing around for.

My stomach flips as he pulls the book out from the rest of the pile and situates himself against the headboard.

“You are not reading me that book,” I blurt.

He licks one finger, flips to the first page, then pauses. “Thatbook.”

“What?”

“You didn’t say, ‘You’re not reading to me.’ You said, ‘You’re not reading methatbook.’” A devilish grin stretches across his face. “So why not? Why not this book?”

I look away.

“Gracie.”

I say nothing.

“Is this a dirty book?”

He’s never going to give it a rest now. My face flames despite the ice against my skin. “Maybe a little,” I mumble against my pillow.

He flips the pages until he reaches the spot I dog-eared. “Chapter seventeen. Hm. Have we gotten to the good stuff yet?”

Silence.

“We have!” That damn grin grows wider as he crosses one ankle over the other and makes himself right at home in my bed. “All right. Catch me up. What’s happened so far?”

I don’t respond, but that apparently is not enough of a deterrent. “‘Chapter seventeen,’” he reads. “‘I wake up with his naked body in the bed beside me and about a dozen possibilities of how I could murder him and get away with it in my head’—Gracie, whatis this?”

My hand shoots out from the blankets, but he holds the book out of reach.

I sigh. “It’s enemies to lovers, okay? And you can’t narrate and judge at the same time.”

He hums as if it all makes sense now. “So why do they hate each other? What makes them enemies?”

I’m not sure why I’m entertaining this conversation. Maybe because his voice sounds genuinely curious and not like I’m about to be the punchline of the joke, or maybe because I haven’t given much thought to the agonizing pain spreading through my skull for the past few minutes.

“They’re more rivals than enemies. They’re competitive figure skaters. They do pairs, but they’re not each other’s partners. None of the others really stand a chance against their two partnerships. For most competitions, it’s pretty much a toss-up which one of them will get first or second. But the guy thinks this might be his last season, and the girl’s partner is threatening to drop her if they don’t win.”

“Huh.” He flips the book over to read the description on the back. “Figure skating,” he mumbles to himself. “Do you watch the competitions and everything?”

I laugh a little. “No.”

“So you don’t care about the sport?”

“Nope.”

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