Page 12 of Coach
I saw his big brown eyes, that smile I could get drunk on if I wasn’t careful,
his ridiculous, lyrical accent, thick enough to trip over . . . or taste.
And the way he looked at me yesterday at the fair, like he didn’t know if he wanted to shake my hand or climb me like a tree.
I worked faster, desperate to keep my breathing steady, trying—and failing—to chase him out of my head.
It was no use.
I still saw him, plain as day, standing there with powdered sugar dusting his jeans and smeared across his olive skin, one hand cradling a sad-looking funnel cake, the other hovering like he didn’t know what todo with it—or himself.
All that energy. All that heat. All of it aimed right at me.
I shook my head, trying to dislodge it like water in my ears.
Nope.
I wasnotgoing there.
I knew his type.
Flirtatious and loud, the life of the party. He was the kind of guy who loved a good project—loved poking at something rough until it smoothed out, polished up real pretty.
But when it didn’t?
When the cracks showed?
He’d bolt out the door.
Guys like him always did.
Tall guys with perfect lips and sculpted abs and arms for days.
They were all assholes. They had to be.
I pressed the sandpaper harder, feeling the grit bite into the wood—and into me.
“Stupid,” I muttered, tossing the paper down hard enough it slid off the edge of the bench.
It wasn’t like he was thinking about me, wasn’t like he would even know what to do with a guy like me. Hell, I barely knew what to do with myself most of the time.
Besides.
That smile? That voice? That immaculate hair that somehow shifted from black to midnight blue in the setting sunlight?
He belonged somewhere bigger than a dusty old workshop filled with half-finished dreams and broken hopes.
I reached for a fresh sheet of sandpaper, flexing it once between my hands.
Work first.
Always work first.
The wood didn’t lie.
It didn’t flirt.
It didn’t promise things it didn’t mean.
