Page 59 of Only With You

Silence settles, but it only lasts for a second before he slices it.

“May I?” he asks, casting a glance at my laptop.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the distraction kind of helped. I’m not as anxious and I wonder if he did that on purpose because he knew.

I slide it right in front of him. “I also have a mouse if you don’t want to use the pad.”

I take the mouse out of my bag and set it next to him. Immediately, it dawns on me what a terrible suggestion that is. I do my best to suppress my smile, but I fail and it widens.

The mouse is ridiculously small compared to his hand. I’m sure he could use it, but it’d probably be uncomfortable.

He stares at me with a blank expression, but when he shifts his attention to the screen, a faint smile touches his lips. It’s so small, it hardly looks like one, but he’s always so serious and stoic, I know I’m not seeing things.

I dramatically gasp. “Did I just make Landon Taylor smile?”

And like a flick to a switch, it’s gone.

“Shut up.”

I can’t help the proud smile on my face because I never thought I’d see the day. Granted it was hardly a smile. It’s the kind you really have to take a close look at, but I know what I saw. And he didn’t correct me.

Taking that as a win, I stay silent.

Patiently, I wait, drumming my fingers against the table, but not too loud to bother him. I’d get on my phone, but that’d be rude, so I look around the apartment, smiling to myself when I land on the jar filled with dollar bills. I continue to let my gaze wander until it settles on his neck.

I take a peek at him, his eyes still glued to the screen, staring intently at it.

Glancing back down at this neck, I study the fine, intricate lines painstakingly etched on his skin. I see a skull, but the side of its head looks like it was bashed in, and what comes out of it are music notes and swirls.

They look like they connect to something on his shoulder and back, but because of his shirt, I can’t see.

He has a five o’clock shadow that does enough to cover his square jaw. I hate to admit this to myself, but it’s perfect and impeccably sharp. Licking my lips, I coast my gaze to the other features on his face.

It looks like his jaw is the only perfect part of his face because his nose at the bridge is slightly crooked. And it’s faint, but there’s a scar on his left eyebrow. I hadn’t noticed it before, but there’s just a tad bit of hair missing. They’re small imperfections that don’t define him, but they’re also kind of…hot.

Blinking the thought away, I note how the seams of his lips are red and swollen. It’s probably due to the dry weather. I only assume that because I’ve seen him lick his lips a few times since he got here.

I almost skim over the tiny mole underneath the tip of his brow, but I manage to see it before I settle on his eyes.

They’re hardened and I don’t have to directly look at them to see the shade that colors his iris. They’re steel gray on good days, and on other days, they’re charcoal. I’ve never seen eyes like his, so intense and so…jaded.

“Yes?”

I look away, snapping out of it.

“I didn’t say anything.”

He hums and slides the laptop between us. “Let’s get started.”

Over the past two hours, I’ve learned two things about Landon.

One, he’s left handed.

When he signed my tutoring contract, I hadn’t paid attention to which hand he used, not that I cared about it to begin with. But because he’s sitting right of me, anytime he had to write, his elbow would occasionally graze my arm. I asked him if he wanted to switch seats, but he said he was fine unless I had an issue with it.

I should have, but I didn’t.

Two, the girls were right. He’s extremely patient.

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