Page 75 of Bad Boy Crush

Except he did know. There was no way she couldn’t have heard him. He’d been buried inside her, his lips to her ear, his heart in his throat.

He understood she might need time. They’d gone from mending a friendship to falling into a sexual relationship without any steps in between. He hadn’t stopped to think through what they’d skipped. Maybe he should.

The sky opened up a few miles down the road, and he eased off the gas. The needle hovered at thirty miles per hour. They were not making good time.

“Tell me a story,” he invited when she gripped his hand tightly in both of hers.

“About what?” Her wild gaze was on the flooded windshield.

“About what you were like in college. Were you shy? A partier? Any threesomes?”

She snapped her head to the side. “No, I didn’t have any threesomes. Why? Did you?”

He resisted smiling. He’d successfully distracted her. “I didn’t go to college.”

“Is that a no?” One eyebrow winged upward.

He seesawed his head before letting her off the hook. “No, Lou. Just normal twosomes.”

The distraction didn’t last long. A moment later she was curled up, knees to her chin, flinching each time thunder boomed overhead.

It was going to be a long lurch to her house.

twenty-one

Ant draped his jacket over his head and Lou’s and they ran to her porch. “I’ll grab your bags. Stay inside and dry.” He ditched the wet jacket on the porch railing and made a quick trip back to his truck. He tossed his hat on the seat and grabbed Lou’s bags. By the time he stepped inside, he was soaked to the bone.

Now he was wet and exhausted.

She handed him a towel, her movements shaky. “It’s bad out.”

“You noticed that, huh?”

Her anxiety that had started on the drive home hadn’t gone anywhere. In fact, it’d worsened. She surprised him by lifting both her bags and walking away from him.

“Hey, I can carry those.” He tossed the towel aside and followed her through the hallway.

“I need to do something. Clearly, this storm is going to last.”

True story. The storm sounded as if it was directly over her house. In addition to that storm, another had whipped up inside of her. That didn’t appear to be ending anytime soon, either. He leaned against her bedroom doorway and watched her unpack, debating getting into it now before he decided fuck it, and did just that.

“Talk to me, Lou.”

“About what?” She stuffed clothes into a laundry hamper against the wall.

“You know what.”

“No, I don’t.” Her shoulders jerked when thunder crashed, shaking the windowpanes. Dammit, she was going to make him spell it out. The smarter play was to let her unpack and unwind. Pace himself. After they were settled on the couch with mugs of hot tea, then he could confront her.

Thing was, he couldn’t pace himself. He was feeling too much at once. If he stayed and pretended everything was okay, that raw spot in the center of his heart would tear wide open. There was a big, pink elephant in the room she wasn’t acknowledging, and it had “I love you” tattooed on its ass.

Fuck it.

“I told you I loved you in the Hamptons and you’ve been pretending like I didn’t ever since.”

“I’m not pretending.” She didn’t look at him as she carried more clothes from suitcase to hamper.

“Well, you’re not addressing it.”

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