Page 57 of Promise Me Not

Does she like that I’m here with her first?

Fuck, bro. Chill.

You sound like a bitch. It’s a creek, hardly even that, not Niagara Falls.

“I stick to campus mostly.”

“Such a good boy, Mason Johnson.”

“I didn’t say that,” I tease, giving a devilish smirk.

She chuckles, looking away. “No, actually I bet you’re not.”

A small frown builds across my brow at her words, even if they are just in response to mine, but I was being a blatant flirt, and I think she might have taken it differently.

I want to tell her I’m not out here chasing a good time, nor am I allowing myself to be caught by someone else who is.

It’s strange to say, but I’m not the same guy I was when I met her a couple of months ago.

Something changed, and it might have everything to do with the girl standing beside me.

Payton stares out at the night, and I watch as her hand falls to her belly.

I wince, waiting for the stiffness to settle in her shoulders as it usually does, but it never comes. In fact, she smiles, spreading her fingers out wider. It’s really good to see.

Her belly is bigger now, a perfect little basketball you can’t even see from the back. It looks hard and painful, and suddenly, I’m anxious.

“We should go back. Sit you down and put your feet up or something, and I can get you some ice or a heating pad or whatever and?—”

My rambling dies on my lips the second her little palm presses to my chest. My eyes snap to the contact, the heat of her skin somehow seeping through the thick material of my hoodie. I swallow and ever so slowly lift my gaze to hers and hold it there. The humor in her blue eyes fades by the second, a subtle but not missed shift happening around us.

Her lips part, and in what I might call slow motion, her hand draws back, and the weirdest fucking thing happens.

I physicallymissthe way it felt. Literally. I frown, and she drops her eyes to the ground.

When she lifts her head again, it’s with a soft smile, but there’s an uncertainty to it this time. I don’t like it. Want to take it away.

So I step forward, grab her hand, and put it back, holding it there.

“Don’t shy away from me, okay?” I don’t know what the words mean, and by the way her features pull, she doesn’t either, but they feel right, so I keep going. “Anything you ever want to say to me, to tell me or show me or ask me, do it. No matter what’s going on in that pretty little head of yours…don’t shy away. Not ever from me.”

“What if what I want to say will upset you?” she whispers.

My pulse pounds harder, and I try not to overthink that. Try and fail. “Say it anyway.”

“Are you sure?” She bites her lip.

Shit. Am I? The fuck is this twisty shit going on in my stomach right now?

I shift her, putting her back to the bridge, her front to me, suddenly needing her to say whatever the hell is on her mind. “Say it.”

She nods, looking away, then peeks up at me through her lashes. “I…”

Here we go.

“I think the other team had better uniforms.”

I tense and then throw my head back on a laugh, Payton joining in at the same time.

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