AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It’s nothing,” I said.
“Nothing?!” Vera asked, shutting off her phone and glancing up at me. “It’s so cool!”
“You think?”
She grinned and unbuckled her seat belt. “Of course I do.”
The lightness reappeared in my stomach, my chest warming. I didn’t know what it was, but Vera Rodriguez was doing something to me—something that I didn’t know I could stop, something I didn’t know Iwantedto stop.
ChapterForty-Two
VERA
“Hey, sweetheart. How’s your day going?” a middle-aged man asked, placing three books on the library’s counter and looking for conversation with a girl half his age, who was still in high school. “I’m returning these.”
Deciding to ignore him, I scanned the books into the library and sent that man on his way out of here. From the couches across from the main desk, Blaise gritted his teeth and glared at the man’s departing figure.
I attempted to hide a smile as I placed the books on the cart behind me. Three hours ago, I had doubted that Blaise actually planned to leave the skatepark, but he continued to insist that he drive me to work. And then he stuck around and told me that he had work to do here anyway. But I’d bet that he just wanted to drive me home too.
Once the man left, Blaise glanced over at me and arched a brow. I slipped onto my stool and clicked through the library’s computer screen aimlessly, acting like I didn’t see how jealous and possessive he seemed right now.
It was kinda … cute.
Wait, cute?! Did I just call Blaise Harleen cute?
After shaking my head in disbelief, I pulled my notebook out of my backpack to pass the time while I waited for the next customer. My stomach fluttered as I reread the last paragraph that I had written about a bad boy who attended a prestigious high school and fell for the good girl who had come from nothing.
Had I been working on a story about Blaise and me? Maybe.
It was a kind of therapy for me, the kind that might break me in the end. If things didn’t work out with the bad boy, the heroine in my story would be heartbroken. The heroine being … me.
Problems always seemed easier to deal with in fiction.
In real life, they left a never-healed scar over my heart.
“Writing about what you want me to do to you next?” Blaise asked, suddenly leaning over the front counter.
I widened my eyes and snapped my notebook shut, not wanting him to read even a sentence of this story. It wasn’t for his eyes—and wouldneverbe for his eyes. I might’ve shown up at the skatepark for him today, but I didn’t want him to know how much I liked him.
Hell, a couple of minutes ago, I was calling him cute, and this man was still holding my smutty stories over my head, promising to blackmail the fuck out of me. First, it had been my body-betraying syndrome that I had caught from the romance books I had written and read. Now, it was some sort of Stockholm syndrome.
Jesus Christ.
“Um, no,” I said, keeping myself as calm as I could. I shoved the notebook away in my backpack, rested my arms against the counter, and looked up at him. “Now, can I help you? Do you have books to check out? Because if you don’t, I need to work.”
Blaise chuckled. “There’s nobody here.”
“Not true. I just checked in a guy’s books.”
“More like he checkedyouout. Fucking creep.” Blaise gritted his teeth and stared back at the door, as if the guy would stroll back into the library to attempt to get my number. “It’s not like you’re doing much anyway, Sunshine. You’re writing smut at work. Your panties are probably ruined.”
“Blaise!” I scolded. “What is wrong with you?! This is a library. Keep your voice down.”
He smirked and leaned forward, gaze falling to my thighs. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
I pressed my legs together and pursed my lips, the warmth gathering inside me, making me hot in all the wrong places. But if I let on that I was horny enough, this man would jump the counter and fuck me at the main desk.
“Y-you’re wrong,” I finally stammered.
