Page 39 of The Bad Girl List

“You did.”

“Oh.” I don’t know why that fact makes me feel self-conscious. I clear my throat and make my way over to the breakfast bar, where Trevor has set out fresh towels, disinfectant, Band-aids, and a set of tweezers. “I have a tendency to commit to things even when they aren’t in my best interest. For, like, years,” I add, thinking about how I'd stuck with Oliver and Presidio for so long. “I’m not a halfway kind of person.”

He surprises me by saying, “Neither am I. Here, put your arms out on the towel so I can see them.”

“I think it looks worse than it is. The blood is already drying.” I rest my arms on the fluffy towel.

He dabs a disinfectant wipe over my skin. I hiss in surprise when he hits a sore spot.

“Hold still.” He gently grips my arm. “There’s still a piece of glass in this one.” Using the tweezers, he extracts it.

A zing of pain shoots up my arm, then disappears. I exhale.

“Better?” He looks up at me through his shaggy hair.

I’d known he was smoking hot when I saw him last night in the bar, but the dingy lighting hadn’t done him justice. In the bright light streaming over the vineyard and through his slider door, he looks like he fell off the cover of a GQ magazine. There’s a bruise on his forehead where he hit it on the trunk last night, which makes me remember how hot his kisses had been.

“Better,” I say faintly, doing my best to suppress the butterflies that make my belly expand when he looks at me.

He continues to work on my arms. In the silence that stretches, I hear the click of Tequila’s nails on the hardwood as she hops over and lays herself across my feet.

“I think your dog and I might be BFFs,” I say, smiling as Tequila does that cute thing with her eyebrows. “I might take a few pics of her so I can draw her portrait later.”

He doesn’t say anything. When I look up from where Tequila nestles over my feet, our eyes meet. I can’t decipher the emotion in his eyes.

“My dog doesn’t normally like anyone except me.” He breaks eye contact and resumes picking at my arm with the tweezers, setting the tiny pieces of glass on the towel.

“What happened to her? Before you adopted her, I mean.”

“I don’t know. I found her limping on the side of the road on a guys trip to Tijuana with my brother. Her leg was broken. I hid her under a blanket in the back seat and paid the border patrol guy five hundred bucks to let us pass.”

“You bribed the border patrol?”

“Is that so hard to imagine?”

“I mean, I can see doing it for Tequila, I’m just surprised it worked.”

“We got lucky.” He flashes a fond smile at his dog. Her eyebrows move as she watches him, but she doesn’t lift her head off my feet. “I think I got all the glass out of your arms. I need to look at those cuts on your chest. I promise this is not an excuse to feel you up.”

“Noted.” The memory of his hands on me brings a fresh rush of blood to my skin. I’m sure he can see me blushing.

“The angle is wrong. You need to get under the lights. Here.” He takes me by the shoulders and guides me around the breakfast bar so that I’m under the pendant lighting. “Lean back so the light hits you.”

I lean, using my elbows for balance. He bends over me, shaggy hair concealing half his face. The smell of earth and spice hits me in the nose, that scent that is deliciously Trevor. It’s just how his shirt smells, which I am definitely never, ever washing.

His fingers gently press against my skin as the tweezers send a sting into me.

“Ouch.” I jump without meaning to.

“Sorry.” He glances at me, his face so close that our noses almost touch.

When our eyes meet, it’s all I can do not to squirm at the sensation that scorches through me. I had thought my attraction to him had been alcohol-induced, but my body is now setting me straight. I squeeze my knees together, suddenly paranoid that he might be able to smell how aroused I am.

His eyes travel over my lips before he turns away and refocuses his attention on my chest. I swallow and hold my breath as he resumes touching me. It’s so distracting that I barely feel the sting when he pulls out another few pieces of glass.

“If we used cheap wine glasses, you wouldn’t be such a mess.”

My brain feels scrambled. I try to track his words, but I’m too distracted by his close proximity. “What?”

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