Page 70 of If Our Hearts Collide

I do.

I don’t want to admit it, but I do.

Collins is like the sun, a constant and consistent source of comfort—even though he seems to be driving me to frustration on most days. He’s basically the most resourceful Boy Scout you would want to be stuck with in the middle of a disaster.

And deep down, I’m thankful he is here with me, and I’m not alone.

If anything, he’s a man of his word.

He says what he means and does what he says. There are no hidden messages.

I find it oddly refreshing.

Collins studies me, and it causes a stirring deep within my abdomen.

It’s his attention that unnerves me. No one has ever looked at me more than a glance, and here I stand rocking on my heels, while he seems to be memorizing all the parts of me that I have expertly hidden all these months.

His closeness knocks me off-balance.

He’s an enigma.

A contradiction between known chivalry and potential corruption…

And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to peel back the layers of Collins Stone and see what this man is all about.

When the doors open, I follow him out, then down the hallway. When he pulls his keys out of his pants pocket and places one into the lock, I’m dumbfounded.

“Coming inside?” Collins asks, punching in the code to disarm the security system on the wall.

“You live here?”

It’s a stupid question—even I know that. Who the hell else’s place would this be?

“I do.”

“Just a few floors above my new place?”

Collins shrugs, removing his shoes and placing them perfectly on the rack beneath the bench. I toe mine off and haphazardly kick them toward their final destination, which is nowhere particular and wherever they happen to land. Shaking his head at me, he takes them and neatly arranges them next to his.

It’s the simplest thing and yet there’s something so spellbinding about seeing the two pairs side by side.

My eyes connect back with Collins’s. “Talk about convenient,” I mutter, knowing his job has got to be easier now with me voluntarily this close.

I think about how he’ll be able to monitor my coming and going. He’ll know exactly who I invite over. And can even poll the neighbors about who knows what.

And then it dawns on me. “Hey!”

“What?”

My finger wags in front of his face. “Did you plan this?”

His lips curl up into a full-on smile, one I didn’t even think his facial muscles knew how to form, it’s that big.

He’s amused. And the realization that I caused him that level of happiness warms me from the inside out.

But I have to play it cool. “Don’t you dare smirk at me!” I poke my finger into his chest. Dayum, he has the muscles. “You did plan this!”

I knew it.

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