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Oh, yes, who better? I could think of a few.
I trained my eyes on the floor, allowing my mortification to sink into my bones. With any luck, I could just disappear—poof!—into thin air.
Carson nudged me in the arm. “Yeah, Mia. Who better than your sexy and devastatingly handsome boyfriend?”
I chuckled, his joke allowing me to glance back at him and roll my eyes, play it off like my heart wasn’t threatening to beat out of my chest.
“How to describe Mia Randalls…” Carson’s voice trailed off, and I squeezed my eyes shut, fighting the urge to twist around in his arms and cover his mouth with my hands. I wanted to stop him. Because suddenly this didn’t seem like a joke anymore. It was personal, and I wasn’t sure I could bear to hear what he had to say—to see myself through his eyes.
“She’s smart, but it’s not just that she’s smart. She works harder than anyone I know, yet she’s too hard on herself. Everyone likes Mia. From the geeks to the jocks to the stoners, every single group of kids in our class has nothing but the best to say about her because she never judges. She’s not petty like other people. She doesn’t gossip, but instead, she gives people the benefit of the doubt. I’ve seen her put others first, one too many times because she hates confrontation. Unless it’s with me, of course, and then she’s brutal.”
Carson’s voice grew soft as he turned me around in his arms to face him. “But she puts too much pressure on herself to be perfect. And I hate that. It eats away at me when I see it.”
My heart pounded like a drum in my chest until I thought it might burst. All I could do was stare up at him, my lashes fluttering as I blinked away my shock.
He reached up to my hair and smoothed a hand through my locks, and for a moment, I wondered if he remembered we weren’t alone, that there was someone—a stranger—standing only feet away from us, but he just continued, dragging his fingers through the length of my locks as he said, “Her hair. . .it reminds me of the sunset—both orange, and fiery pink, and pale yellow at the same time. She’s a good friend—loyal to the core and trustworthy, the kind who will be on your side through anything. And her laugh. . .She has this laugh. The one where she doesn’t think someone’s funny, but she’s pretending anyway. That laugh doesn’t reach her eyes. But her real laugh, now that’s something to see because her whole face gets into it. It’s uncontrollable. It sounds like wind chimes, and she crinkles her nose and eyes.”
Reaching up, he touched the bridge of my nose, making me gasp. “And every time I hear it, I think, I want to be the one to make her laugh like that because it’s impossible to hear and not smile. It pulls you in, that laugh.”
Breathing became a struggle as he grew silent, staring down at me, his mouth a tight line as his eyes searched mine. I wanted to say something—anything—but the words were stuck in my throat. The things he said about me, they didn’t sound like observations of a boy who loathed me. Quite the contrary.
“Well,” the saleswoman breathed, “then we need something extraordinary. Hold on a moment.” She breezed past me, toward shelves at the back. But I barely noticed. I hardly noticed anything except the boy in front of me.
And every time I hear it, I think, I want to be the one to make her laugh like that… His words were a sucker punch. They formed a lump in my throat and left me disoriented. I wasn’t entirely sure what just happened, but I could feel the floor shift underneath us. Something had changed.
But before I could say anything, the woman was back, holding out a small crystal-shaped bottle with an amber liquid inside. I watched dumbly as she took my arm and spritzed some on the insides of my wrist, and over my clavicle as Carson’s gaze tracked her movements like a lion watching his prey.
“Try this,” she murmured, then stepped back, giving Carson room.
And before I could prepare myself and process what was happening, he stepped forward, bending down, his face inches from my neck. The warmth of his skin radiated off of him. His lower lips grazed the spot where my pulse pounded. And as he breathed me in, he hummed in response. The sound made my heart skip, made my hands sweat. It was single handedly the most sensual thing that had happened to me in my eighteen years on this earth. And when he pulled away from me and took a step back, I felt a regret so strong, so deep, it made my heart hurt.
His eyes met mine, his breathing heavy. “Yep. That’s definitely the one.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Carson drove us to Luigi’s in silence. Every so often, I stole a glance at him, but when he turned his gaze to mine, I looked away. His words kept replaying in my head. I couldn’t forget them if I tried, and all I could think was that for someone who was supposed to be my enemy, it certainly seemed he knew a lot about me. Despite our years of feuding, he’d been paying attention. And that thought made me feel all warm and tingly inside, like someone lit a firecracker in my heart.
And the only thing more confusing and frightening than the possibility of Carson having feelings for me was the notion that I think I liked him too.
When he pulled into Luigi’s and parked, he turned to me. “Okay, what’s up?” he asked. “You’ve been super quiet this whole ride.”
“Oh. Um, it’s nothing,” I said, but my voice was two octaves too high.
He arched a brow like he didn’t believe me. “You hungry?”
I nodded and bit my lip. Suddenly, I forgot how to use my voice.
He grinned, then shook his head and got out of the Jeep, rounding the front until he reached my side and opened my door. The sunlight caught his hair, turning it bronze as he reached out his hand for me, and even though this was the same boy that once put grass in my peanut butter sandwich, everything seemed brand new. Different.
He clasped my hand in his, warm and confident, then led us inside. The wait was short, and the entire time, he held my hand as his other one played with a lock of my hair, while I stood immobile, afraid to move for the fear that I’d break this spell and he’d stop.
Once we settled into a booth, Carson sat across from me and leaned his forearms onto the table. He filled every available space with his broad shoulders, his long arms, and his confident smile. “Thanks for spending the afternoon with me,” he said like we had a choice and it wasn’t for the Angel Program. “What would you have done had I not shown up?”
Gone insane? Filed divorce papers for my parents? Languished inside my room all day until Ethan called? All of those were viable options. “Probably more of what I was doing when you knocked on my door.”
“Which was?”
I exhaled. “Drown myself in music so loud nothing else existed.” It’d be a miracle if I had eardrums left by graduation.
