Page 19 of You Rock My World
I meet her gaze, bluffing confidence. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Josie, you were wrecked after ten hours. How can you manage a year?”
She has a point. The thought of being around Dorian day in and day out is my wildest dream and worst nightmare wrapped into one.
“I’m a professional, Lily. I can handle it.”
She drums her fingers on the table. “Can you? Really?”
“I don’t have a choice. It’s my job.”
“I don’t want to see you get hurt, Josie.”
I force a smile. “I’ll be careful. Don’t worry.”
But the words feel shaky, and I wonder if it’s a promise I can keep. My pulse races just imagining being near him. How much Dorian can I take before my heart stops listening to my head?
12
DORIAN
One Year Ago
Josie’s still smiling, smug from her “waxing poetics” joke. I should quip something back. Instead, on impulse, I ask, “What color do you see me as?”
Without missing a beat, she says, “Definitely a maroon.”
“A maroon?”
Her goofy grin gives her away. She’s messing with me.
Josie fires off a playful finger gun. “Gotcha.”
After she blows on the tip of her index, her expression turns serious and she destroys my soul a little more. “You’re ultramarine, streaked with gold. Full of depth and imperfections that hold a beauty most people don’t take the time to see. They stop at the blue and forget to search for the gold.”
My knee-jerk reaction is to volley back that her waxing-poetic skills are no joke either—defuse with humor. But something in her tone stops me short. Her words have no trace of irony, no hint of flattery. She means what she’s saying. That’s really how she sees me.
I settle for, “That makes me sound like a painting no one could afford to buy.”
“Maybe you’re more like abstract art.” She joins her fingers in a square and studies me through the pretend frame. “Misunderstood until you take a closer look.”
“I’m too tired to make sense of that analogy.”
“Are you calling my analogies confusing?”
I glance at my watch and am surprised to see it’s already four in the morning. The hours have slipped by like sand through an hourglass, each grain a flicker of Josie’s light I get to keep for myself and steal from the rest of the world.
“I’m saying it’s late and my brain is fried.”
I stare down at my palm, tracing one of the lines creasing my flesh—is it the life line, the love line? I can never tell them apart.
I don’t look at her as I speak next. “Even if you told me half an hour after meeting me that you’d never sleep with me, maybe we should try to get some shut-eye. No one’s coming until morning.”
Josie gasps, mock-scandalized. “Aren’t rockstars supposed to live like vampires, from dusk till dawn?”
I wince. She has a knack for finding all my open wounds and rubbing salt into them. “It gets old after a while.”
“Well, I guess even vampires need a break.” She kicks out a leg, and in the most casual tone, asks, “Do your feet smell?”
