Page 90 of The Bachelor

It slowly reached for me, grazing the bottom of my chin. “Nothing is off-limits when I’m with the guys. We discuss anything and everything.” His palm moved to my cheek, his fingers diving into my hair. “Except the heavier and physical details involving you.”

I was taken aback by the softness in the way he was touching me and the words he’d just spoken.

He was just so gentle, which was so unlike Camden.

Almost loving.

And if the car behind us hadn’t honked, alerting him of the green light, I wondered if he would have kissed me.

But as soon as the sound hit our ears, his hand was gone, and his car was moving again.

“I need to know …” I started, hesitant, unsure if he would even reply. “Why am I the exception?”

The question made him smile.

A sight I wanted to stare at forever.

But a second after I finished speaking, something hit me, and I asked, “Or is it that you don’t talk about me because you don’t want Declan to know in case he says something to Hannah—”

“Declan knows. So does Macon.”

I allowed that information to process through me before I said, “Oh.”

He downshifted as he approached the red light. “I assure you, Declan won’t say a word to Hannah, and Macon is a vault.”

“If you told them, I assume you trust them.”

He slowly looked at me. “That’s the thing, Oaklyn. I didn’t tell them.”

“Then, how did they know?”

“Apparently, they saw it on my face.”

They sawiton his face.

Which meant they saw an expression similar to the one I’d been wearing when Hannah came to my apartment the other night and called me out about Mystery Man.

Is that what I do to him?

How I make him feel?

Oh God.

“So, they saw your smile and immediately knew it was because of me?” My cheeks had already reddened and felt hot. Now, they felt like I was holding a blowtorch against them.

He checked the light and shifted, his stare staying on the road as he began to drive. “For Declan, yes. He saw me walk into the bar the evening Macon was hitting on you, and I guess by the way I looked, he put two and two together.”

When he paused, the tingles in my stomach rose to my chest, my heart pounding as I really thought about what he was saying.

“Macon is a different story. He knew long before Declan, but, yeah, he pretty much put it together too.”

“Camden”—I took a deep breath, knowing the risk involved with asking this question, knowing I could get an answer I didn’t want to hear—“I don’t understand. What did they put together?”

He stayed silent until he approached the next light, the car coming to a halt at the same time his eyes locked with mine. “Oaklyn …” His voice drifted off as he looked at me, his gaze changing with each second. Deepening but softening at the same time. “I didn’t want to have this conversation in the car. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to have it tonight.”

I swallowed, my throat feeling so tight.

I was still so unsure if he was going to say the words I was dying to hear or if this was going to go in a very different direction.

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