Page 25 of The Road to Finding Us

He smiles, waiting for me to connect the dots.

“Disgusting, Aspen. I don’t need to hear how the girls you kiss have also kissed Blaine. I don’t believe you anyway.” I turn to head toward the front door, my boots clacking against the pavement as I bound up it.

“Suit yourself,” he says nonchalantly, still near enough that I can feel his breath hitting my neck.

“You don’t need to stand so close,” I throw over my shoulder, running up the front porch steps as fast as I can manage. I swing the door open, expecting to find Selma and Maverick on the couch together.

But I’m met with nothing. Then, I notice their bedroom door hanging wide open—neither one of them in sight.

“Where are they?” I ask as Aspen shuts the front door.

“I don’t know. I got home not too long ago, and they weren’t here.” He props his hip against the entryway table, crossing his legs at the ankles.

“I just need my bag, then I’ll be going,” I explain, taking small steps toward their bedroom. The look on Aspen’s face has me wary. He looks like a hunter feeling out his prey.

“Awww, not so soon,” he teases, his gaze flicking to my feet as I inch away from him.

“I’m leaving,” I tell him.

Aspen ignores me. “Should we have girl talk?” he sneers. He claps his hands together, the sound echoing through the empty apartment.

“You can go fuck yourself,” I shoot back, quickly turning away from him and power walking toward their bedroom.

“Why would I do that when I’d much rather fuck with you?”

My body wants to stop in its tracks at his question, but I don’t want him to know the way his words can be felt in my core, so I continue with my trek until I find my bag. I pull the strap over my shoulder then pull my hair out from underneath said strap.

When I turn to exit the room, I see Aspen blocking the doorway. The look on his face is serious. I can almost see the wheels in his head turning. The notion scares me. Joking, pervy Aspen I can handle; it’s when he turns calculating that he terrifies me.

The complete one-eighty has me uneasy.

“Why’d you go on a date with him, Lily?” The use of my actual name instead of his typical pet name for me only makes it worse.

I fiddle with the strap on my shoulder to try to buy myself more time. “Because I’m a grown ass adult and I can?” I try to fit underneath his arm stretching through the doorway, but he quickly lowers it, blocking me in once again.

“Not a good enough answer,” he says, his words uncomfortably close to my ear.

I look up at him, intimidated by his nearness. His breath tickles my ear, and the spot he reached with his crude words earlier warms even more.

What’s in his eyes stuns me the most. For once in his life, there isn’t indifference written in them. They look serious, as if he actually cares about my response.

“What would be a good enough answer?” I ask, refusing to look away from him. His arm is centimeters away from my chest. Every time my chest heaves after taking a long breath, I can almost feel the scratch of his arm across the peaks of my boobs. Part of me wants to breathe harder just to test what that’d feel like.

He must notice the tension, because his eyes flick to the small gap between us before he looks at me again. “That you regret going,” his voice is husky, void of its typical joking tone.

My mouth slowly parts as my brain tries to decode what he just said. Did I have too much sugar? Am I seeing things? My thoughts scramble as I try to process what the hell Aspen is saying. “Come again?” I whisper, my eyes darting to his lips. His tongue comes out to wet his lips and I can’t look away. I’m too sucked into every small movement he makes.

“I want to hear that you regret going,” he says, dragging out the last syllables, his gaze stuck on where my chest heaves. He’s so locked in on my chest it feels as if he can see through the thick material of the dress covering it.

I search his face, trying to fill in the blanks from his words. “Why?”

He doesn’t answer me immediately, but he does manage to throw me off balance—because instead of using his words to answer, he does something worse.

He uses his hands.

He slowly moves his arm. I avert my eyes to the open space in front of me.

Then, I see my escape route.

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