“Um,” he says.
I dig my fingernails into the foamy cane handle in an attempt to distract myself from the way he looks. “I knocked, and your door flew open.”
“And you just walked in?” he demands, his voice slightly raspy. Oh. His hands are trembling.
I shake my head. “I fell.” When his eyes go wide with worry, I try to hold up my hands in surrender but realize I’m still holding the plate and my cane, and I don’t want to drop either. “I’m not hurt. Also, I don’t want your birds.” He blinks at me, so I shake the plate for emphasis. “I don’t want your birds,” I repeat.
The moment lingers, then shatters, and he takes two steps toward me, freezes, then takes two more. He’s almost close enough for me to touch him now, and fuck me, but I want to. I want to run my fingers over the scarred ink on his arms. I want to graze my palms over his abs. I want to press my lips to his throat where I know his pulse is pounding. I want to lift his shirt and bite his snake tattoo along his hip.
I don’t do any of that. I just shake the fucking cat food on the dish again.
His breath comes out with a rumbling groan, and then he closes the distance between us, but instead of taking the plate, he puts his hand over mine and makes me hold it tighter.
“I put this in your yard so they’d stop going after your trash.”
“But I don’t want—” I start to say again.
He cuts me off. “I know, but they kind of live outside, and I have no control over whose trash they decide to ravage.” His mouth twitches up in the corner, and I want to put my tongue there and taste that little smirk. Yeah, I really am fucked in the head, and it has nothing to do with falling off that cliff. “I know you call me a witch”— I blush at that—“but I promise I’m not one. I can’t tell them what to do. If they eat cat food, they should stop trying to steal leftovers out of your garbage cans.”
I work my mouth, but no sounds come out, and he strokes his thumbs over the sides of my wrist, which only makes it worse.
“You smell like coffee,” he says, his voice almost a whisper.
I blink several times as I search for my voice. “Café.”
He tilts his head to the side with a frown.
“I went to a café,” I clarify. “I walked.” I don’t know why the fuck I’m telling him that. He can’t possibly care.
“Itisnice out,” he says.
Fuck me, are we seriously making small talk three inches from each other, separated only by a silver plate meant for cat food?
“Neither one of us has a cat,” I say.
His brows lift. “Um. I know.”
“Easton wanted me to get a cat. But I don’t trust myself to take care of it. I got fish instead. I’ve kept them alive.”
“That’s good.” He says that patiently and like he means it. Not like he’s pandering to my nonsense rambling.
Fuck, I need to get out of here.
“I need water,” is what I say instead. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because while I need to leave, it’s the last thing I want.
His lips twitch again, and he carefully takes the plate out of my hands and sets it on a little table by the front door, where his keys are. I glance at it, then look back at him.
“Come on.” He jerks his head for me to follow, then leads me through his place, and it’s then that I once again realize it’s a lot shittier than I first realized. The floors are in hellish condition—probably original wood, but they need to be sanded and sealed. Or maybe ripped out entirely.
I’m not exactly a handyman, but Liam had done construction projects a few times for extra cash when we were incollege, and I’d gone to the sites to watch all the guys work with their biceps all exposed.
It was nice eye candy.
But not as nice as this.
None of them had been as good-looking as North. A strip of skin appears at his waist as he reaches high over his head for a water glass, and he fills it from a pitcher in his fridge. That thing is old too—secondhand for sure, and was probably made in the nineties.
It’s a sort of weird, eggshell cream color with divots on the handle where people have gripped it over the years. The inside seems very clean, but the door creaks loudly when he opens and shuts it.
