AllFreeNovel
Share Us
As we shake hands, I feel even more certainty twisting through me.
Her touch is soft and warm, and I can feel the shyness, excitement, and the need, all clashing together…
Or maybe that’s my exhilaration, my need, my nerves making me project onto her.
We shake hands for a few seconds, then she laughs in the cutest way, a tremor in it as she cocks her eyebrow.
“Are we going for some kind of record?”
I chuckle, withdrawing my hand, warning myself to keep this surface-level. I can’t spend the whole evening talking regularly with everybody else, then suddenly become a different person for Lucy.
She’d be able to tell how achingly I want her. She might get scared.
Or if a miracle happened and she wanted me, too, in the same way, I need her, then my entire life’s going to change.
My work will change.
No more photographs.
And maybe I’ll even have to tell Lucy the secret.
Bothsecrets about my work and my past.
“I think we broke it,” I smirk, removing my hand with an effort. My body roars at me to make physical contact again, to keep it this time. “What do you do, Lucy?”
“I’m an admin assistant for a chain of thrift stores,” she says. “But….”
She trails off.
Without discussing it, we’ve moved to the edge of the table, then past it, the food is forgotten. We’re standing in a corner of our own, as though we’ve claimed it, the same way we’ll claim a wedding hall one day, a new home, a place by the lake for holidays, all that stuff I thought was lost to me after Anna….
Because I could never find somebody perfect, mine.
And here she is.
My thoughts are stampeding again. Surface-level, I remind myself.
“But?” I ask after a pause.
She waves a hand. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does,” I say firmly.
Looking up, she blinks. It’s like she’s trying to understand my sudden intensity.
It’s a fair thing to wonder since there’s no reason for my body to be burning up this way from her point of view. Or for my mind to strip her, tear off her strappy top and jeans to reveal her curvaceous body, her hips begging for me to sink my hands into them, her soaked young….
Stop. Focus.
She laughs awkwardly. “Why?”
There are many reasons I want to say about wanting to know her better, deeper, and more intimately. My need to protect her and fight any bastard who’d ever cause her harm.
Instead, I smirk. “I’m a curious man.”
She shrugs. “I was just going to say I was in college. I was going to become a counselor. I’mgoingto; I meant to say. I took a break after Dad.”
“I’m sorry.”
