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After that? He didn’t know. Way too early to worry about it.
So instead of asking Ben Haddon’s daughter if she wanted to get a room here at the Cadence and explore this attraction between them fully, Zach drew the kiss to a close.
Lyra simply stayed where she was, her eyes still closed, her lips still parted, now glistening. It was all he could do not to dive in again.
“Lyra,” he said, keeping his voice soft.
“Hmmm?” Her eyes fluttered open. Such a pretty green, like the still surface of a quiet lake.
“Can I have your number?”
CHAPTER SIX
Lyra rolled over andgot a face full of wet. “Gross, Brutie!” she complained and pushed the giant dog head and its cold, wet nose away.
Brutus was very much Pop’s dog, but he understood that Lyra was the one who was usually up first, thus she was the best option for breakfast. She kept her door closed at night, but the doors all had lever handles, and Brutus had figured them out three seconds after he’d encountered one.
She hadn’t opened her eyes yet, but it was obviously morning, and more than a food-motivated wolf hybrid informed her of that fact. Bright sun streamed through the windows; she’d forgotten to close her curtains last night.
Last night. Zach the Bull.
Waking fully, she pushed her pillows together and sat up against her headboard. Brutus stood beside the bed, trying to wait for an invitation but clearly struggling with his baser instincts.
“Okay, baby. Come on.” She patted the empty spot on her queen-size canopy bed, and the monster that was their family pet leapt onto it, turned three times, stepping on her legs and belly with each turn, and finally dropped heavily at her side, resting his head on her belly. In exchange for a good cuddle, he could be patient for breakfast.
Hooking one arm over the beast’s neck, she reached the other to the dresser beside the bed and grabbed her phone.
It was almost eight in the morning; no wonder Brutus had barged in. Also, there was a message from Zach, sent more than an hour earlier. She could read the whole thing from the lock screen:We’re riding out. Had fun last night.
Just that. No emoji, not even a smiley. No suggestion he’d like to keep in touch, or get together again some time, or anything like that.
Except ... well, the text itself was such a suggestion, wasn’t it? He’d asked for her number, and he’d already used it. He’d started a chat.
Lyra really despised the new part of relationships. She felt nervy and defensive, wanting to overanalyze every word or deed—or lack thereof—and simultaneously worried she was reading too much into every word or deed or lack thereof. It was maddening and deeply unpleasant.
That was the number-one reason she hadn’t had many. The number-two reason was that her onlyrealrelationship, one that had lasted enough time to be considered ‘lasting,’ was Tommy Como, and that had gone pretty wrong at the end. Not, like,feloniouslywrong, but pretty wrong.
She hadn’t thought Tommy was outrageously good-looking, but he wasn’t bad. However, he’d been two years ahead of her in high school, and that had added at least a couple points to his hotness score. He’d worked as a DJ and drove a restored ’69 Impala with a glasspack muffler, which, in her fifteen-year-old mind, had added a couple more points.
The fact that he’d asked her out two weeks after her mother had moved out of the house had probably added a couple more points. In other words, he had been, factoring in a lot of things that weren’t looks or personality,extremelyhot to her at the time.
From the start, though, Michelle had thought he was a super-douche. Looking back through the lens of experience, Lyra could see why, and now she agreed. Most of the things she’d liked about him at first were costumes more than anything else. Tommy Como actually hadn’t had much personality of his own.
Then again, weren’t most teenagers wearing personalities like costumes, trying to figure out which one suited them best? Wasn’t that why Lyra had liked him at first—because she thought dating a DJ with a ponytail was ‘cool’ and liked to sit beside his board and watch him work? Because she liked to be seen riding down the Strip in his loud car?
