Page 104 of The Love Haters

I hoped it would.

For a moment there, I thought I should be the captain of my own life and just make it happen, myself.

But then I chickened out.

Mostly because I still wasn’t sure where, exactly, we stood. He’d been so weird yesterday—hadn’t he? Or had I just been reading him wrong? Either way, I was still looking for clues to his feelings. And if he kissed me of his own volition, that would be a big one.

And then it started to look like he would do it. I started to feel like he was ever-so-slowly leaning toward me.

I held my breath.

But then, instead, he looked away. Then he said, all curt, “I think you better go back to the sofa.”

Was he mad? “You do?”

“You can’t say things like that to me, Katie.”

“I can’t?”

He brought those dark eyes back to meet mine, and he shook his head.

“You’re the one who asked the question. I just answered it.”

He nodded, agreeing. “I shouldn’t have asked. That’s why I need you to get out.”

I won’t pretend it didn’t sting. I had just basically—in the most joking way possible—told him that I, personally, found him irresistible. I’d disguised it as some kind of anthropological statement, but I guess we both saw through that.

How could I even hope to hide something like that? It had to be obvious, right?

I mean, we were in his bed—and he was in his underwear. If you ignored the Great Dane in between us, I’m not sure how much more suggestive I could possibly have been.

But the answer to that suggestion was, apparently, a very unambiguousGet out.

“Of course,” I said then, trying to gather my dignity back up. “I get it. No problem.”

I felt a prickle in my throat like I might actually cry.

That’s normal, Beanie would’ve said.That’s normal for a rejection.

But it didn’t feel normal.

I slid sideways, working not to tug the bedspread or do anything else that might jog George Bailey awake. I made it off the bed and then rotated to tiptoe out.

But before I made it to the door, George Bailey was already there, blocking my way.

Defeated, I walked with him back to the bed.

“Guess I’m staying,” I said.

“Guess you are,” Hutch said to the ceiling.

This time, as I lay back against the pillow, Hutch clicked the lights off.

And we fell asleep there, in the darkness—as alone as two people in the same bed can be.

BY MORNING, GEORGEBailey was on top of me again.

Ifelthim before I saw him—draped over my belly as if we slept that way every night. I strategized for a minute before trying to extract myself, since my first attempt last night had gone the opposite of well.

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