Page 61 of Make Me Mean It

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CONNOR

Ipull the helmet off and push my flattened hair back from my face, glancing around at whatever middle-of-fucking-nowhere place Theo has decided to bring me.

I’m prepared to hate it purely on principle, right up until I get a proper look at the lake.

The dirt track ends beneath a thick canopy of trees, with only a stretch of grass and scattered rocks sloping gently towards water so clear and blue it barely looks real. Sunlight breaks through the leaves overhead in warm streams, catching across the surface and scattering every time the breeze disturbs it, and despite myself, I stand there staring.

It’s beautiful.

Annoyingly beautiful, considering Theo brought me here.

“Beautiful, right?” Theo drawls.

I look over as he pulls off his helmet and shakes out his hair, leaving it somehow even messier than before. He leans back against the bike with the same lazy ease he seems to do everything, tattooed arms folding loosely across his chest, an unlit cigarette hanging between his lips.

Naturally, the sunlight catches him perfectly. It falls across one side of his face, glinting off the silver of his lip ring whenever his mouth moves around the cigarette.

“It’s alright,” I hum, turning back towards the lake before Theo can notice I’ve spent more time looking at him than the view.

My attention stays there for maybe five seconds.

Apparently crystal blue water and sunlight breaking through the trees aren’t enough to compete with Theo Knox standing beside a motorbike, because my eyes find their way back to him anyway.

Or, more specifically, to the cigarette still resting between his lips.

I watch him take a slow pull, the end of the cigarette burning brighter between his fingers before he exhales through the corner of his mouth.

“Why do you smoke?”

Theo’s eyes flick to mine.

The question slips out somewhere between watching the smoke leave his mouth and wondering, not for the first time, what he actually gets from it.

Theo takes another pull instead of answering, his gaze moving out across the lake while his thumb works slowly over the cigarette. He rolls it between his fingers, brings it back to his mouth and inhales again, taking so long over something he normally does without thinking that I realise what he’s doing.

He’s buying time.

I press my lips together and wait him out.

Eventually, Theo flicks the cigarette onto the dirt and crushes it beneath his heel.

“That wasn’t an answer,” I say, my eyes following the cigarette to the ground, lifting again just as Theo catches the bottom of his t-shirt and pulls it over his head in one smooth motion, and there’s a lot more Theo in front of me than there was a second ago.

Tattoos cut across tanned skin, disappearing over his ribs while the muscles in his stomach flex as he tosses the shirt aside, and I follow the movement long enough to realise I’m openly staring.

I look up, Theo’s eyes finding mine, satisfaction pulling the corner of his mouth up.

“Enjoying the view, princess?”

My face warms. I narrow my eyes at him, scrambling for something better and finding absolutely nothing.

“Shut up.”

Theo chuckles under his breath, and when I risk looking back, his fingers have moved to the button of his jeans.

He toys with it beneath my stare, making absolutely no attempt to hurry while his eyes lift to mine beneath dark lashes.