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My makeup had held up, so I gave one last shrug at my reflection and turned for the door. Only to stop in my tracks when I caught sight of Garret walking into the locker room. He paused mid-step, almost stumbling when he saw me. The way he licked his lips was a compliment all its own, especially when the pupils of his eyes enlarged and he inhaled sharply.
“You look amazing,” he said in a raspy voice. “I was going to take you out, but right now, I don’t know if I can share all this beauty. I want it all for myself.”
Heat filled my cheeks, and I quickly lowered my gaze, busying myself by putting on the gloves. I heard his footsteps, but I didn’t look up until his fingers touched my chin and gently urged me to lift my head.
“Tell me what you want, blue eyes,” he murmured. “If you want to go out, I’ll take you anywhere so the world can see how beautiful you are. If you want to go home, we can go there. Grab some dinner on the way and hang out in your room watching movies or shitty sitcoms until the sun comes up. Or we can go back to my place. My sister is in town. Maybe it’s too soon to introduce you to any of my family, but Nova is special.”
I quickly swallowed to get moisture back in my mouth. “You paid for all these clothes just to take me home and hang out in my pajamas?”
“It’s just money, baby. I bought them so I could see you in them. It doesn’t matter to me who else sees you—or doesn’t.” He skimmed his thumb over my chin and up my jaw. “But maybe on your next day off, you’ll wear this dress when I take you to dinner?”
Say no. Say no. Say no.
“Okay,” I whispered, ignoring the voice screaming in my head to end whatever was going on between us, then and there. Instead, I let him take my hand. “I want Chinese for dinner.”
Garret
There was a Chinese restaurant open all night just a block from Lis’s apartment. She ordered our food on the ride back to her place, and with traffic so crazy from partiers celebrating the ball dropping still crowding the streets, the delivery guy was waiting for us when we stepped off the elevator.
I pulled out my wallet and extracted several bills, exchanging them for the food while Lis unlocked her door. She walked into the apartment, and I followed moments later with the three heavy bags of food.
“Kim is out, but I don’t know when she will be home.” She made a face. “Want to eat in my room, so she doesn’t bother us?”
“I want to do whatever you want,” I assured her and followed her into her room. There was a rainbow rug at the foot of her bed, and I set the food on that before shrugging off my coat. “Get changed, babe. I’ll unload these boxes and grab us some drinks.”
Pink tinged her cheeks, but she grabbed a few clothes from her closet and quickly made her way to the bathroom while I did as promised. By the time I returned to her room with bottles of water and cans of diet soda, she was already sitting cross-legged on the rug. Chopsticks in hand, she was licking her lips hungrily as she considered the options and what she wanted to taste first.
Having already kicked off my shoes, I dropped down beside her on the floor and offered her a drink before leaning my back against the bed frame and stretching out my long legs. I watched her as she finally picked up the container of chicken lo mein and twirled her chopsticks into the noodles before stuffing a bite into her mouth.
The way she licked sauce off her lips had me forcing back a tortured groan, and I quickly made my own selection from the containers to distract myself from the dirty thoughts I was having of her luscious mouth wrapped around my cock. But the memory of the stark fear I’d seen in her eyes when I’d leaned down to kiss her at midnight made me keep my hands to myself.
I’d seen that look before. In the eyes of some of the women who sought protection from their abusers at the safe haven of Sanctuary that my aunt ran back in Creswell Springs. My mom had made both Nova and me work there from time to time when Aunt Gracie needed extra hands.
Some of those women, they started trembling as soon as a man walked into the room, their eyes like a feral cat looking for any and every possible exit they could use at the first sign of violence. My gut would twist every time I saw them react like that to me, and to have Lis look up at me with the same fear in her eyes had torn at something in my chest.
It had told me that she’d been hurt in more than one way by her abuser, and I knew without a doubt that I needed to take things even slower than I’d originally thought I would have to. I never wanted to see that look in her pretty blue eyes ever again when she saw me.
Grabbing an egg roll, she stuffed half of it into her mouth and chewed like she was starving before wiping her fingers on her pajama pants and picking up her new TV’s remote. Selecting Netflix, she clicked on her avatar that we’d made for her earlier that afternoon and then skipped over several suggested shows and movies before picking Pokémon.
I stiffened at her choice, the tips of my ears already burning. “Are you trying to make fun of me, Lis?” I grumbled, hating that I felt embarrassed.
She shifted her head to look at me with a frown. “How could I possibly make fun of you, gangster?”
I gritted my teeth, not wanting to admit it, but the confusion on her face seemed genuine. “I was obsessed with this show when I was a kid.”
“Me too!” she exclaimed with a laugh. “Actually, I go Pokémon hunting all the time.” Grabbing her phone off the foot of the bed where she’d tossed it earlier, she opened it to show me the game app.
I picked up my own phone and showed her the app on my home screen.
“No way!” she cried in envious disgust, snatching my phone out of my hand. “How do you have three Uxies as well as a Mesprit and an Azelf? That’s not even fair. I’ve only seen one Uxie in all the years I’ve played this game, and it ran away before I could capture it.”
Fuck.
It was right then, in that moment, with her eyes glowing with excitement and jealousy, that it hit me. Without a shadow of a doubt, I knew Lis Brewer was made for me. Not only was this girl beautiful, but she was a little bit of a geek just like I used to be—and, if I had to admit it, still was. There was no other woman in the world more perfect than she was.
No matter what happened, how long it took for me to get her to trust me, I would make her fall in love with me too. Because now that I’d found her, I couldn’t imagine my life without her in it.
“What?” she muttered when she realized I was just sitting there staring at her. Pink filled her cheeks, and she dropped my phone back into my hand. “There’s nothing wrong with liking anime. I read manga too,” she said, lifting her chin at that stubborn angle I’d come to adore. “Make fun of me all you want, but I’m not embarrassed that I like what I like.”
