Hurriedly, I glanced away and busied myself retrieving the moving blankets to spread out on the floor. I was grateful he couldn’t read my mind, or else he’d know why I’d bought that pack of Tic Tacs in the first place.
Forcing myself to answer calmly, I said, “No, just the Twizzlers. Besides, it hasn’t even been fifteen minutes. You can’t be hungry already.”
“I’m a growing boy, Mac Mac. I’m always hungry.”
Stepping around me, Brady took the other end of the gray wool fabric and helped me lay it flat.
The ground wasn’t too hard once we were seated. I imagined it would feel a lot like camping when we eventually settled down to sleep.Oh, God. Sleep. I had to sleep in this shed with Brady Judd.
But it was barely six o’clock, so we had a lot of time to kill between now and tomorrow morning. Hopefully, someone would be in by seven, at the latest.
I really hoped I wouldn’t need to pee. It was probably lucky that I hadn’t found any bottles of water along with the Twizzlers.
Brady placed the lantern off to the side and began shuffling the cards. “What do you want to play?”
I gave him a flat stare. “You seriously want to play cards?”
He quirked a brow. “Would you rather braid each other’s hair and gossip all night long like we’re at a sleepover? Or I suppose we could put these cards away and chat.” His challenging gaze dropped to my lips very meaningfully, and I swallowed hard. “I bet I can think of some topics to keep us talking. I know I’ve been curious about a few?—”
“Okay!” I practically yelled, snagging the deck of cards from his hands. “Cards it is. I’ll deal.”
Brady grinned like he’d taken the lead in a race, and, unfortunately, I had to agree.
Shit.
I don’t know how many rounds of cards we played. We cycled through every game we could think of while bickering and eating Larry’s bag of Twizzlers. Some games we’d played with our families or learned at summer camp.
At some point, we’d started putting cards up on our foreheads and trying to guess the suit we held.
Brady held a king of hearts to his forehead with one finger. It was facing out where I could see it, and he was trying to guess what card it was. He’d gotten pretty good at naming the suit, so once he’d correctly identified hearts, I’d told him to try to name the card in three guesses.
His blue eyes looked nearly silver in the strange glow from the electric lantern. They narrowed on me as if he could pull the answer out of my head by staring.
“Is it ...” He searched my face, and I snorted a laugh. “A jack?”
“Nope.”
Brady closed his eyes and hummed.
“Are you divining the answer?” I teased. “Consulting the great beyond?”
“Maybe,” he replied without opening his eyes.
“Two guesses left. Hurry up.”
“I’m thinking,” he insisted. Then he said, “Twizzler me,” and opened his mouth like a baby bird.
I rolled my eyes but grabbed the licorice stick and put it between his teeth. He was ridiculous. I could feel myself smiling.Damn it.
“Three of hearts,” he said after he finished chewing.
“Nope. Last chance.”
His eyes were still closed, so it felt safe to study him. His brown hair was longer on top and generally styled like that of a messy frat boy who’d just rolled out of bed. But with the playing card in the way, his hair was sticking up a little more than usual in the front, making me grin. Despite the time of day, there wasn’t even a hint of stubble on that baby face. I bet he still got carded when he bought alcohol outside of Kirby Falls.
My gaze fell to his lips. They weren’t chapped or rough. I knew from experience just how soft they were. His bottom lip was fuller than the top, and as I watched, they parted on an indrawn breath.
When my attention finally drifted back up, I jolted in surprise. Brady’s eyes were open. He was watching me watch him.
