Page 6 of Catching Sparkles

“And leave you here all by yourself?” He asked, lightly smirking as he glanced up. The barely-there rasp in his voice alerted me he hadn’t been up that long either. “What if a serial killer broke in?”

But when he pushed a scribbled note toward me and I skimmed it, I realized they’d left without us because they hadn’t wanted to wake either of us up.

“You think I need you to defend me against a serial killer?” I wondered, and he tilted his head, obviously amused by my answer.

His eyes were this heart-wrenchingly gorgeous shade of light blue, so fair they almost looked minty when the light hit them. I’d always loved them. And now framed by his glasses, they looked even prettier.

“I’m sure you could handle it,” he said. “As long as he was still a toddler.”

Scoffing, I swallowed the giant mouthful of syrup-soaked pancake I’d shoved in my mouth. “You don’t think I can fight?”

“No, Kendall. I don’t.” His response was so blunt and flat, I couldn’t help but snort.

“Okay, but I have other skills.”

“Not arguing that. You make a hell of a cookie.”

“I have other skills, too.”

“Oh, yeah? Like what?”

Because he was so poetically handsome with the sunlight from the giant bay windows pooling in over his toned body, the only skills that were coming to mind were the kind that resulted in really good orgasms.

“I, uh, did a lot of theater stuff in college,” I finally said, because I couldn’t think of literally a single other thing I’d ever done. He hadn’t shaved yet, and the stubble on his chiseled jawline paired with the way his long fingers were gripped around his phone were turning my brain inside out. “The Peter Pan show we did sold out.”

“I’m sure you made a lovely Tinkerbell,” he remarked, and a shocked laugh tumbled out of my mouth. He’d always been quick with the banter, way smarter and wittier than a jock had any business being. But he’d never been like the other braindead jocks at our school. There’d always been this intensity about him I couldn’t sense in anyone else. It was cliché to think, laughably so, but… He wasn’t like anyone else.

“You’re funny,” I conceded, not able to stop the grin from carving itself across my mouth. “I’m glad your ex didn’t take that from you, at least.”

The silence was sudden and deafening, my eyes widening in mortified horror as I realized what I’d actually let come out of my mouth. He slowly looked up from his phone, his brows raised in shock.

“I-I’m so sorry,” I managed to stammer out, a hot blush rushing up to my skin. I could feel it burning me all over, even down my neck. He was the last person I’d ever want to make feel like shit by being careless with my words. But I’d gotten so comfortable, and so relaxed in his presence, that it had just slipped out. “That was totally out of line. I didn’t mean it.”

He stared at me for another few moments, while my stomach hardened into a ball of ice inside me. What the fuck was wrong with me?

“Ah, no,” he finally said, then cleared his throat a bit awkwardly. “It’s okay. You’re, uh… You’re right. She really fucked me over.”

“I… I don’t even know her,” I said quickly, my brain still not quite blinking back to a fully functioning state. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“It’s okay,” he said again, this time with less shock and more amusement. “You’re the only one. Everyone else is dancing around it.”

“Still,” I insisted, but relief was starting to trickle in. I hadn’t totally pissed him off. “I… I’m sure you don’t want to talk about it.”

He took in a deep breath, before opening his mouth, then closing it again, like he couldn’t decide what he actually wanted to reveal.

“Not exactly,” he admitted. “But it’s kind of nice. That… Maybe…”

My pulse quickened as I waited for him to keep going, my heart melting into a gooey puddle in my chest at the rare flash of vulnerability on his face.

“Maybe someone doesn’t think it was my fault,” he finally finished, his dark brows furrowed a bit. The sticky pile in my chest, formerly known as my heart, bubbled up to a boil as anger bloomed to life inside me.

“I would never think that,” I snapped. He looked surprised by the sudden shift in my tone, but only blinked. “She… She’s…”

“Keep going,” he invited lowly.

“I just don’t get how she could do that,” I said, pushing myself off the stool to stalk across the kitchen. I huffed, crossing my arms as I finally settled against the counter. He stayed perfectly still, but his eyes followed my every move. “Especially not to someone like you.”

“Yeah?”