Page 33 of Dahlia Made A List

“I was so fast on the sprints. They timed them, you know.”

I did know. I’d sat on the bleacher, nodded back every time she waved in my direction. Watching her today was eye-opening. It was easy to discount Dahlia as her ideas and enthusiasm shifted with the wind. But as she’d skated around the track, her focus was unshakeable. I’d gone from salivating over the curvy contours of her ass and thighs to understanding all the hours she’d put in skating around the drive-in while I tinkered on the Firebird were paying dividends today. Dahlia’s attention might shift moment to moment, but she managed to dive into each of those moments with unbridled enthusiasm.

I should have known better after she bounced back from the panic attack.

But I’d been as guilty as anyone else. Dismissing Dahlia as no more than her obvious attributes, but every day, it felt like she revealed a new layer. An unexpected depth that wound me up in her special brand of pandemonium, made me crave more than the feel of her body. Made me want to be on the receiving end of her focus. To live in the moment with her.

She whirled midway up the steps, swinging around to face me so fast, her hair swished across my face.

“I did it, Wyatt! I can’t drive yet and I don’t see myself ever making left hand turns. My Signature Dish remains a mystery and there’s a slim-to-none chance anyone’s gonna overlook allthisto love me. But I tried out for roller derby today and Inailedit. I knocked it out of the park. I’m practically a roller derbydiva.”

Her eyes barrelled down at me, sparking with happiness that lit her up from the inside out, her soft pink lips parted in a soundless gasp. Her scent, honeysuckle sweetened with the sweat of the day’s exertions, whispered around me, taunting me to lean closer and inhale, an idea that had no business in my head. My fingers dug into the smooth wood of the staircase bannister. Need burned in my gut.

“Jesus, Dahlia, ‘bout to send me head over ass down these stairs.”

She grinned, slapped her palms to my cheeks and leaned down until her forehead landed against mine. So close, I could only see her in parts. Blue eyes flecked with smokey gray, the faintest hint of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Happy in a way I hadn’t seen her before and that roused the protector in me. Become the keeper of the spark in her expression. Guard it so it grew into a fierce flame, magnificent, unwavering, and true.

“I’m so proud of myself, I want to scream. I want to tell the whole wide world, but no one would care. But you’re right here, Wyatt. So I’m gonna tell you.”

She straightened up and my hands wrapped around her upper arms. To steady her? To keep her near?

She dropped her hands from my cheeks, the burn of her fingertips along my skin digging deep. The happy guise she showed the world crashed to the ground, wrecked by the fervor of genuine emotion. I wanted to wrap her up in my arms, hold her close, revel in the fact that I was here to celebrate her accomplishments. She didn’t need anyone else. I craved every inch of her body pressed to mine, land my mouth on hers and shove my tongue deep. Until she didn’t think about left hand turns or dry chicken. Until she shut her mind down to her past, her disappointments, to everything except me.

The ember burning my gut flickered, crackled into life. Fanned into a flame, hot and unrelenting. My dick swelled until the pressure of my zip threatened to unman me. I sucked in a breath and pushed her away. The light glowed behind her and I couldn’t see her eyes. But she slipped from beneath my fingers, whirling to dash the rest of the way up the stairs without a word.

I swallowed down the knot in my throat. Disappointment or relief?

“Everything’s prepped for dinner,” she said as she unlocked the door and moved inside. I trailed along in her wake. “We’ll be eating the best pork chops in the history ofeverin twenty minutes, tops.”

Since beginning this weird exchange with Dahlia, she’d fed me three times. Once, we sat at the miniscule counter between the kitchen and living area, but the last two we’d sat our asses on the floor between her electric blue couch and marble-topped wooden coffee table.Two of the four legs had been painted a dirty white.

I shifted her books, a basket of yarn and a peacock statue to the far cushions of the couch before moving to stand at the narrow entrance to the kitchen.

Dahlia stood at the tiny chunk of counter space between the fridge and the stove. She still had her hair up in the ponytail she’d worn for her derby shit, but colorful strands feathered along the side of her face. My fingers itched with the need to smooth them back behind her ear.

I pressed a fist hard against my gut, but the burn was too deep. “Where you keep those mats?”

She jumped, the plastic package slipping from her fingers to slide right off the counter. I bent down and snatched the crinkly package of—I flipped it to see the label—fresh rosemary from the linoleum. But the kitchen proved to be too narrow and my arm rubbed against the side of her tit as I straightened and I nearly dropped the fucking package again.

I tossed the damn rosemary onto the counter beside her and stepped back to the safety of the kitchen entrance. She rolled her lips together and the desire to taste them arrowed straight through me, landing heavy on my dick.

Where the fuck had she kept those stupid mats women liked to put down as though their presence somehow made a meal proper? I retreated further, to the other side of the counter and, thank fuck, there they were on the tiny kitchen table. Sandwiched between a potted plant that had seen better days and a purple coffee cup filled with more pens than any woman could possibly need and a pair of drug store glasses.

I snatched up the placemats and bolted back to the coffee table. No way in hell I was going back to the kitchen. The black screen of a television reflected back at me, an image of me standing in a too-small room, the sounds of a woman I had no business thinking about preparing a meal filtering through the apartment. I thought of my grandmother, of the drive-in and, fuck my life, I thought of Dahlia’s list. Of the light in her eyes tonight, of the way her hands cupped my cheeks and about how my skin burned where she touched. Worse, was the flip in my stomach, like I was a bumbling teen again faced with his first crush.

I ran a hand through my hair, and looked away from the reflection. Square built-in cubbies ran along the wall, with matching shelves boxing in the TV on either side. I squatted down to rifle through the baskets lining the shelf beneath the coffee table and finally raised the remote with a grunt of triumph.

“Everything’s going. I set a timer for fifteen minutes on my phone, but I should be back before it dings.”

She spoke from the end of the couch, jacking my heartrate up like I’d just smashed the hood of the Firebird down onto my hand. She didn’t wait for me to reply and disappeared toward the front of the house.

Toward her bedroom. The sound of the shower jarred me from staring at the doorway she’d disappeared through. I closed my eyes against the image of her standing beneath the basic shower head I’d installed. Water coasting over her body, sudsy bubbles over her chest, down the slope of her breasts, dripping from pretty pink nipples. As pink as the raspberries growing wild in the foothills of Sapphire Mountain; darker than her lips, delicious under my tongue.

A groan ripped up from my chest.

What the fuck was going on with me today? I’d lost every inch of the control I’d spent a lifetime honing to perfection. I had no resistance to her addictive brand of sweetness.

I scrubbed a hand down my face, over my beard. The front door called to me, even as my grandmother’s scheming echoed in my ears. But the reminder of her devil’s bargain wasn’t what sent me to the kitchen to stand over the stove like some sort of Hell’s Kitchen gargoyle.

---