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“I’ll meet you there, then. We’ll get some studying done and grab something to eat after?”
“Uh… sure?” I say.
“Unless you’re busy?” he asks. He has a prime opportunity to be all passive aggressive about this, but of course he doesn’t take it.
“I’m not. Well, I am, but if you want to come to the library, I can’t forbid you to do that.”
He sends me another one of those long, serious looks, and his jaw is clenched in a worrisomely determined way, and his eyes are slightly narrowed like he’s thinking very hard about something.
“Right,” he says slowly. “Okay. Then I’ll see you later?”
And then I’m alone. And very much confused.
I said all the right things. Everything I meant to say, I said. It all makes perfect sense. I’m a creature of logic. I thrive on it. If I lay out reasons why I can’t do something, I can count on my brain to accept it. But now here I am, and I have so many excellent reasons why nothing serious can ever happen between me and Ryker.
And still…
I want.
Which is stupid.
Wanting things is dangerous.
It’s why I rarely let myself do it. Want plants a tiny seed of hope in your chest. And it doesn’t matter how impossible it seems that it will ever grow and blossom because the ground is hostile, and you refuse to water it, and you refuse to nurse it—it’ll still be there, even if it’s wilting and pathetic and pitiful.
That’s what makes Ryker so dangerous.
Whenever he’s near me… I want.
LAKE
You’d think the word “casual” was quite an easy one to understand. Seven letters. Three syllables. Pretty straightforward in meaning.
Casual (adj.): relaxed, not regular or permanent.
Ryker clearly didn’t get the memo.
“What the hell are those?”
I stare at Ryker’s hand and try to make sense of what I’m seeing.
“Cornflowers,” he says. “Also known as bluebottles, apparently. Did you know that?”
He walks past me into the apartment and goes to the kitchen, where he digs out an empty glass jar, puts some water in it, and plops the jar on the corner of the kitchen counter.
I don’t move an inch because I’m too busy staring at him. What the fuck is this insanity? I slowly close the door and walk back to the kitchen nook, all the while eyeing the flowers. Maybe it’s a prank? Only if it is, I really don’t get it.
Eventually I give up trying to figure out what this is about.
“Why are there cornflowers in my apartment?” I ask.
“Walked past the florist and saw them,” he says with a shrug. “And then I bought them.”
“Why?”
“As research.” He lifts the jar up and holds it next to my head. “Yup. The same color as your eyes.”
I stare at him some more. The fuck?
