Page 83 of Night Shift

He smiles. “Because I knew you’d laugh just like that.”

I’m going to say absolutely ridiculous things—mushy, sentimental things that will probably terrify him—so instead of letting myself open my stupid mouth, I step forward and cup Vincent’s face in my hands. He stands still and lets me. His eyelids flutter shut as I run my thumbs up and down, tracing from his chin to the corners of his mouth to the faintly freckled skin over his nose and cheekbones. There’s some dark scruff on his jaw. I wonder what it would feel like against the insides of my thighs.

I drop my arms to my sides. Vincent takes a breath before he opens his eyes.

“My shift at the library starts in three hours,” I blurt.

He arches an eyebrow. “You’re seriously still thinking about going?”

“No. I just—” I say. “I’m trying to figure out what I’m supposed to tell my supervisor.”

“That you’re busy making out with me,” Vincent says, like it’s obvious.

“Oh? Is that all we’re doing?”

Vincent’s eyes flash with surprise, and then his tongue darts out to wet his bottom lip. The step he takes toward me is hungry. Primal. I’m suddenly and violently reminded of how much I enjoyed having his cock in my mouth.

“I thought you said you wanted to take it slow,” I croak.

Vincent smiles and shakes his head. “I can’t move slow with you, Holiday. But we don’t have to do anything else tonight. We can go to the house and you can meet my teammates, if you want. Or we could go to dinner just the two of us, and we can talk about our parents and our favorite songs and whatever else we want to.”

There he goes again, being nice.

But I don’t want to move slow—not when I’ve spent my whole life moving slow. I know everyone runs the marathon that is life at their own pace, and there’s nothing wrong with the fact that I’ve needed a longer warm-up than a lot of people my age . . . or that I’m about to take off sprinting when there are women a decade older than me who are still stretching. It’s not a race. It’s just a circular track we all get to share. I won’t regret listening to my gut and waiting to feel ready.

I’m ready now. Too ready, perhaps.

I grab the hem of my shirt and peel it up and over my head.

Thirty-two

In my head, taking off my shirt was a smooth and seductive move.

In practice, the collar catches on my nose, and my right elbow flails and knocks into something very solid. I let out a sharp curse as a dull tingle shoots up and down my arm—funny bone—and Vincent grunts, because the hard object I just elbowed was definitely his chin.

“Sorry! Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”

Vincent lets out a slightly pained laugh.

“Are you okay?” I ask, still stuck inside my upturned shirt.

“I’m fine. You’ve got a killer right hook, though.”

This is humiliating. I don’t think I want to take my shirt off anymore, because I’m pretty sure I can’t look Vincent in the eye, but I also don’t want to put it back on, because that means I’ll have to admit that I really suck at this whole romance thing.

Maybe, if I’m lucky, I think, I’ll just die right now.

Vincent sighs. “Come out of there, Holiday.”

He grabs my shirt and helps me wrangle it off. My hair crackles with static and goes everywhere. I brush it back into place, take a bolstering breath, and look up to find Vincent staring at my chest with that same frozen expression I’ve decided to call his buffering face. I can’t tell if this is a good or a bad thing. My bra is beige. No lace. No nonsense. I also have lines across my stomach where my jeans were cutting into me earlier, but I’m not worried about any of that. Vincent isn’t going to change his mind about me because of some boring underwear and weird jeans indents.

Still, I wish he’d stop staring.

“What?” I snap.

“Your tits look fucking phenomenal.”

I’m so mad that I laugh. “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”

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