Page 133 of Hunt for You

I swung it open like a madwoman, ready to call after him, but he was standing there, head down, his phone in his hands.

There was a split second when my brain registered everything—the tight shirt with the sleeves rolled almost to his elbows to reveal his tattoos, the strategically messy hair, the trim-fitting blackfrom head to toe—and my heart actually lurched.

Then his head snapped up, his eyes bright and shining, and he smiled when he saw me. He straightened, slipping his phone back in the pocket of his pants and did that thing guys do where they kind of stand back to scan you from head to toe and I thought I was going to see Sam-the-Felon—I thought he’d rub his jaw and nod and say something hot.

But instead he kept his chin down, his eyes came up to meet mine, and his smile got warmer. “I thought maybe you’d changed your mind,” he said quietly, in that low, soothing voice that he’d used when I was upset, except now there was just ahintof an edge to it and I swear it vibrated right in my lady-parts.

“No, just weird,” I blurted, then wanted to close the door and turn back time and start the whole thing over again because I ruined it.

But Sam’s smile got wider and he quirked one eyebrow. “My kind of woman,” he offered.

I think I blushed.

I know I stepped out of my house and checked that the door was locked before I took the arm he offered to lead me back down the path to his cheap little car and I only thought of Cainone time, when I passed the bush that he’d hidden behind that first time…

Then Sam opened the passenger door for me and held it while I got in, then trotted around the car to the driver’s side. The car’s suspension wasn’t great, the whole thing dipped when he sat down, but right after he turned the key and it roared to life, he turned his head and looked me in the eye.

“You look beautiful, Bridget.”

Idefinitelyblushed that time. “Thank you. You look hot. Are priests allowed to do that?”

God, the lopsided smile got me every fucking time. “I told you—”

“I know, but I have joke-Tourette’s and I can’t stop saying it.”

He kind of huffed a laugh and shook his head, as he put one hand on the wheel and lifted the other to hold the back of my seat in a deeply masculine move thatalwaysmade me shiver as he looked backwards to reverse out of my driveway.

And then he did the whole thing.

The wholenormaldate thing.

I hadn’t been on a normal date since Homecoming when I was fifteen—and even that was just me and Ryan Speelman going through the motions before we fucked.

I hadn’t thought men still existed who opened doors and reserved tables at cute hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurants that were owned by a family, and paid for the meal and looked you in the eye instead of the chest.

But Sam was… different.

Of course, I wasn’t.

I spent most of the night blinking because he’d ask me something and I’d catch myself sitting there wondering what his chest looked like under that shirt, and I’d have to take a second to remember what he’d actually said. Which was usuallya question about me, or an adorable observation about someone in the restaurant.

It was all so fuckingwholesome.

Twenty minutes after he picked me up, my belly fluttered because our knees brushed under the tiny, round table we were sharing.

Ten minutes after that my stomach sank because he smiled at the waitress and asked an intelligent question and it hit me that he knew how to do this, and I didn’t.

I was desperately uncomfortable, barely talking, and it was makinghimtense.

Five minutes later my heel was bouncing under the table and I was looking at the exit over his shoulder.

“…wondered if you’re comfortable talking about your past—the normal stuff, I mean. I wondered how it felt to change your name so young.”

I grimaced, fiddling with the knife and fork on the tablecloth, turning them over and over. “That made me feel dumb,” I said.

“Dumb? Why?”

“Because people would say my name and I’d forget and think they were talking to someone else, and then I’d make up stupid excuses and… everyone just thought I was weird and kind of psycho and I mean… I kind of was…” I said lamely.

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