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“No.”
“No what?”
His hold on my neck rose to my jaw. His thumb pressed against my bottom lip. “No, snarkiness doesn’t suit you. Not from this sweet mouth. Stop.”
He was right, it didn’t, but I was completely out of sorts. And maybe I was more than a little angry and fed up with…well, everything. So, if some snark came out, it was only fair, and I didn’t want to be called out on it.
“I’m sorry I can’t be sweetness and light every second of the day. I’m human, Amir. Sometimes I’m in a bad mood. Sometimes all of this gets to me, okay?”
“All of what, mama?”
He used that voice on me. The lacquer-coated one that made my stomach feel like it was on fire.
“Everything. You, the poems, school, Max. I guess I’m tired. I know you don’t care. I know I have to suck it up, and I will. I promise I will. But—”
Amir swung me around, backing me into the side of his SUV. I hadn’t even noticed we were in the parking lot until that moment.
“If you could do anything right now, if you didn’t have any of this shit going on around you, what would you do? How would you spend your Friday night?”
I considered his question carefully, flipping it over in my mind to see if it was a trick. “Last semester, I spent most of my Friday evenings with Hells and Elena having dinner and sometimes watching a movie. They always went out after, and I’d stay in my room studying and listening to music. And Iknowit sounds boring, and maybe it was, but I want a little bit of that boring back. I wasn’t worried or scared. I could justbe. I’d like a night like that, where I can justbe.” I brought my hand up to his chest, pressing into the heat emanating through his Savage U T-shirt. “I don’t know if I’ll get that back.”
“You will.” He leaned into me, bringing his face close to mine. “I’d give you that if I could.”
Lips parting, I sucked in a breath. “That’s a nice thing to say.”
“If I take you back to your dorm now, give you the night off, what will you do?”
I was both elated and miserable at the prospect. I needed the distance from Amir he hadn’t been giving me this week, but I didn’t want it. My mind was at war with my stupid, stupid heart. My mind would win, though. All I had to do was remember those perfumed sheets, and my mind would stomp my heart into a bloody pulp.
“Homework. I really, really need to catch up.”
He shook his head. “Jesus, what a waste. Friday night and my pet wants to do homework.”
“It’s not that I want to, it’s that I have to. We’re not all as naturally gifted as you, Amir.”
His mouth twitched, giving me a small grin. “That sounded like a compliment.”
I pushed on his chest, but of course he didn’t budge. “You know how smart you are. Don’t be coy.”
He’d had me read over his analytics paper on Wednesday before he turned it in the next day, and it had been perfection. My little nerd soul had longed to throw it down on the floor and roll around in all the ideas and analysis printed on those five sheets of paper.
Stupid Amir and his big intellect. He could have just been hot, but no. He had to add in smart and make himself irresistible to a girl like me.
Perfumed sheets.
Pain. Blood. Gore.
There, that’s better.
He trailed his hand down the side of my hair, toying with a ringlet. “If I didn’t have to do a job for Reno, I’d take you out. Give you the kind of Friday night you should be having.”
“Why do I think our ideal nights out differ greatly?”
“You deserve to be shown off, Zadie, not locked away in your room. You can have a lazy Sunday. You can be boring when you’re forty. What you won’t be doing anymore is hiding. Not when I can be with you.” He hooked his arm around my waist so our bellies were flush. “You dance?”
“In my bedroom,” I replied.
“You dance.” His lids lowered. “You’re gonna dance with me.”
