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"Yeah," I exhaled.
"He wants you. Bad." He shook his head. "Lucky bitch."
"Yeah." I seemed to have lost the powers of speech. My knuckles tingled.
"Shay? Earth to Shay. What are you doing here, lover?"
I shook my head. "I have literally no idea."
Kit nodded. "Then I'll tell you. You need to do him."
Chapter Six
The afghans slid off in one big pile, leaving me to shiver myself awake. My dreams were a jumbled mess of second guessing and my knuckles still let off a ghostly tingle every so often.
He brought me coffee. But he's a cheater. He's sex on legs. But he's a dog.
Frustration finally launched me to my bare feet, which promptly froze on contact with the floor. I yipped a little and unsteadily hopped over to the area rug to thaw.
Jasmine's classes didn't start until eleven, so I had the apartment to myself in the morning. I crept quietly passed her bedroom, my feet freezing with each step on the hardwood floors. My slippers were somewhere in the storage unit, I hoped.
The huge windows of Jasmine's lofted living room let in a draft that was strong enough to move the hairs on my exposed forearms. I shivered and grabbed the throw blanket off the back of her book-strewn couch and wrapped it around my shoulders as I padded to the kitchen.
I am not a grab and go sort of girl. I need a proper, sit-down breakfast to start my day. This morning, it was bacon, toast and two fried eggs, accompanied by French press coffee so strong you could stand a spoon up in it. I heaped several spoonfuls of sugar into it, tasted it, and then spooned in two more. Tre used to joke that it wasn't the caffeine that started my mornings, it was the sugar rush.
Once it was done, it tasted exactly like the coffee Liam had brought me yesterday.
Thinking about him being sweet put me in a bad mood that wasn't made any better by the prospect of walking nine blocks on the slushy sidewalks of Philadelphia. It was always a gamble whether or not the sidewalks would even be cleared this early in the morning. Hell, I would probably have to shovel the area in front of the store first thing upon arriving.
I closed the door to Jazzy's apartment and threw the deadbolt with the key she had given me, locking her safely inside. Then I took a deep breath and wound my scarf up around my neck and over my mouth. The hallway was overheated, and the sweat prickled at my hairline, but I knew the feeling of warmth wouldn't last.
When I stepped outside, the icy wind was enough to make me gasp. Breathing hurt. I hunched deeper into my puffy jacket and began the slow, painful trek to Young's.
This January had been brutal, a deep freeze blanketing the east Coast. The snow-piles that lined the streets just sat there, frozen into sharp crystals that breaking off and nosediving into my boots as I stepped off the curb.
As I turned off Jasmine's sheltered block, the full force of the wind caught me full in the face. The faster I walked, the more the wind whistled in my ears. I ducked my head almost entirely into my scarf, bending into the stiff gale that turned the streets of South Philadelphia into wind whipped canyons, and cursed.
I rushed the whole route to Young's by memory; left on this block, right on that block, two blocks north. I sprinted against the lights, crossing in front of SEPTA busses in the blind hope they'd stop for me.
I was almost there.
"Oof!" I slammed into something warm and solid just as my feet hit a patch of ice. I skidded and scrabbled for purchase, visions of a broken hip dancing through my head, when all of a sudden my fall was arrested.
"Are you okay?"
It was a familiar voice, but my scarf had slipped over my eye. I jabbed blindly with my key until the two of us practically fell into the warmth of the shop. I landed on the floor with a sigh of relief. Too relieved, even, to be embarrassed.
That came right at the moment I saw Liam Graves picking himself up off of the floor.
"Are you okay?" he repeated, extending his gloved hand.
I took it wordlessly and allowed him to haul me to my feet. I was grateful that my scarf covered my face and I could blame the cold for my red, flaming cheeks.
"You're here early," I stammered. That was the least graceless thing I could have said. I should have been thanking him for catching me before I broke my skull.
But Liam was not bothered. "I have a meeting this morning. I headed out first thing."
"A meeting with her?" I asked, pointedly.
"Her?" His eyes were blank. He was completely clueless.
"You're here to pick up the flowers today, right?"
"Actually," he showed that dimple again, looking boyish. "I was hoping to see you again." His dimple deepened as he smiled wider. "Start this cold day off with some sunshine."
Bringing me coffee yesterday was one thing, because he had brought some for Kit too. But this? This was an outright admission that he was hoping to catch me alone. "It is so cold, isn't it?" I babbled inanely. My knuckles tingled in recognition.
If he noticed I was babbling, he didn't call attention to it. "Worst cold snap in the last quarter century, or at least that's what they said on Channel 6 this morning."
I sighed. "I hate winter. Every time it rolls around, I swear I'm not going to be here in Philly for it, and yet here I am once again."
"Here we are," he echoed. "Must be gluttons for punishment."
Something about the way he said that....
"Do you have plans to get away this winter, Shay?"
"Ha!" I shook my head. He was rich beyond all sense, of course it would be normal to him to just jet off somewhere warm. "No, I wish I could.” Why was I talking to him like this? Why was it so easy to just chatter at him? "But working here helps."
"Here? Around the flowers?" His eyes twinkled a little in a way I didn't understand.
"The colors, and the textures too. It's nice to see color other than the gray of dirty snow."
"You have a beautiful way with words, you know that?"
"I do?"
"You do. The whole language of flowers explanation you gave. and now with your descriptions. You have a very poetic way of speaking."
My mind flashed back to the pile of notebooks sitting in the cardboard box in storage. I hadn't written since Tre left. When I sat down and let the words come, what they said was too painful to read. "Thank you," I said instead. "That's nice to say."
"I'm a nice guy...," his dimple deepened. "Unless that's not what you're into...."
I'm into single guys! "Didn't you have a meeting to get to?" I asked him abruptly. The way he was looking at me was confusing every moral I had.
I could barely hear him over the thudding in my ears, but I could feel him. He was moving close to me. I flushed hotter, burning up in my winter coat. "Right now it doesn't seem all that important," he said, with that peculiar thickness in his voice.
"What?" My head was swimming with him so close. But I wasn't backing away.
He brushed his hand along my cheek. It was a test. I knew it, and when I didn't flinch like I should have, he gave a small grin of triumph. "I've wanted to touch these lips since I first saw you," he said. His voice had dropped down to a tight, throaty whisper that was doing something terribly exciting to my tummy.
This is wrong. Stop. This is so wrong. I tilted my head up and looked at him.
He bent down and brushed his lips against mine.
When I didn't pull back, he made a low sound, and pressed them harder.
He kissed me like he knew me. Like I was already his. Like he already knew everything there was to know about me, and what I needed in a man.
I felt a hot spark travel down to the base of my spine where a slow ache began to build. I heard the noise I made, low and pleading and suddenly jolted back to reality.
"Stop," I panted
, pushing him back off of me.
He pulled back. "Why?" Like it wasn't completely obvious.
"You can't kiss me!" I seethed.
He brushed his thumb across my lip. "I already did."
I wanted to bite him. All of my conflicted rage over the past two days finally reared its ugly head. It was time for the truth, no matter how much I wanted to ignore it. I felt the ferocity boil up and out and I nearly choked on it.
