Page 29 of The Love Haters

“I’m looking for Rue?” he said then. “Is she around?”

“She’s in the back,” I managed to rasp out. Was my throat closing up? Couldnot having underwear onin a moment like this cause you to suffocate?

“Thanks,” he said, slapping his palm on the jewelry counter a couple of times before heading off in that direction. I think I was actually holding my breath when he turned—still walking, backward—and said, “Great hibiscus, by the way.”

Hibiscus?I looked up.

And there he was.

My gaze snapped to his like a magnet. And then all questions of tallness or manliness or anything else disappeared. All I could see at first was his face—dominated by big, serious, dark eyes. Eyes are not an uncommon feature, of course—but I had never seen a pair so butterybrown—or such a combination of friendly, and intrigued, and… somehow melancholy.

Maybe it was the shape of them? Or the slight frown at his brows?

Canyou smile and frown at the same time?

Apparently yes.

Other features appeared after that. Tan skin, with a plum-red mouth, and a defined jaw that pulled my gaze down to a truly mesmerizing Adam’s apple.

Had I ever been mesmerized by an Adam’s apple before?

Or evennoticedone?

I’m sure this face-to-face contact lasted only a second. But it felt likeMatrix-style bullet time. As though I was taking in the angle of his eyebrows, and the slope of his nose, and the deep intensity of those eyes, frame by frame, in ultra slo-mo.

It wasn’t love at first sight. You can’t fall in love with a person you don’t even know.

But it was… something.

Longingat first sight, maybe?Yearning?

Salivating?

That face of his wasbeautiful.

I felt positively overtaken by the sight of it.

I wanted to buy it, and own it, and take it home.

And then, with what could only be described as the most charming, earnest, barely there smile in all of history, the guy touched the back of his own head—and yes, it was a longish burr cut—to indicate the hibiscus hair clip.Great hibiscus.

Ah. “Thanks,” I said—and then, like a hopeless overachiever, I eked out a few more syllables: “Rue picked it out.”

“Of course she did,” the guy said, as if Rue beflowered every person she met.

Why was everything happening in slow motion?

Why were those melancholy eyes of his the most dreamy things I had ever seen?

And when he gave me a little goodbye wave and left to go find her, why did I feel a momentary flash—despite everything—of wishing he would stay?

Questions to ponder.

Especially once I realized something else about that face.

I’d seen it before.

That beautiful face, those serious eyes, that hypnotizing aura… belonged to Tom Hutcheson. Also known as Puppy Love. Also known as Hutch.

---