Page 58 of Shy Girl
“H-how is this r-real?”
At first, I didn’t realize I’d said it out loud until he turned back onto his side, propped his head into his hand, and stared at me with a questioning gaze.
“What do you mean?”
My heart leapt into my throat. Was it my turn to be honest now? He’d laid it out there so casually. Perhaps it was my place to do the same.
But how could I?
Jayson had always lived on the line between idiocy and danger. Dangled in the place where courage was a requirement to survive. I’d never put myself out there like that. So what did it cost him to admit he started to feel something for me? That a kiss was—for once in his life—more than just a kiss? Not as much as the years I’d packed into my infatuation with him. A few days of awareness was a drop against the ocean of adoration I’d given him.
To admit that?
To open that up?
He’d probably be frightened if he knew how long I’d felt something for him and dreamed of his hand in mine. That sort of truth couldn’t come too soon, because whatever fragile bloom began would never finish. It was too much. The tidal wave of emotion I’d held back for him would swamp both of us.
I swallowed back a nervous laugh. “Wow, J-j-jayson. I’m . . . I d-don’t know what to say.”
He grinned lazily. “It’s a gift.”
“Th-thank you. F-for telling m-me, I mean.”
“You’re not going to do a whole we’re-just-friends, I-don’t-feel-that-way spiel, are you? Because there’s no way you would have kissed me back like that if there wasn’tsomethingyou felt.”
He yawned again as he said it, one hand covering half his face, like he asked that sort of loaded question every day. Maybe he did. Hernandez had always seen the world so differently than me.
If you only knew.
“N-n-no,” I said quietly. “N-never that.”
He sobered and lifted a heavy, warm hand to my face, where he stroked the edge of my jaw, then let the pad of his thumb trail to my lip. I watched his wrist, too afraid to meet his eyes. He’d see everything written in my gaze. There would be nothing left for me to hide from him if he just saw my eyes now. But I wanted to pull his touch closer. To cling to him and beg him to stay, forever, because the realization of so many dreams was more than I could bear.
“Tell me what to do next, Dagny,” he whispered, “so I don’t screw this up. I’m sort of new to this and I’m not very good at it. Tell me what you want the most?”
My hand lifted and wrapped around his. He paused, thumb on my chin. I moved his palm so it cradled my cheek and tilted my head into it.
“This,” I whispered, “is p-perfect.”
Hernandez reached up with his other hand and pulled me into him. I slipped into his warm side and he tucked me under his arm, my head under his chin. The skin of his shoulder burned hot where my cheek rested on it. I hesitated, then let my hand rest on his chest. He played idly with my hair while I closed my eyes.
“This,” he whispered, “is why.”
Then he pressed a kiss into the top of my head and I melted all the way to my bones.
16
Jayson
Dagny reminded me of a kitten.
Warm, snuggly, but wary at every noise. Last night on the way back from dinner, she’d been panicked, even frightened. The fact that she ran away from me—or perhaps just the embarrassing situation of literally crashing into one of the richest couples in the country—only made the comparison stronger. She was easy to spook and ready to run, tail poofy and mouth hissing.
Now, she purred, snuggled into my side and content. Whatever happened between our kiss and the end of the dinner when I found her asleep on her bedroom floor, I had no idea. But there was also a story deep inside of Dagny that I had a feeling was starting to play out.
My burst of honesty had been selfish. Keeping that crap pent up made me a wild man, because life was too short to mess around with games. If she was interested, great. If not, no problem. I’d come into and out of enough relationships to know most of them just didn’t come together.
But Dagny was something else altogether.
