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I rear back, just an inch, and try to recall what the hell she’s talking about.
“About your… yourMia,” she mumbles.
“What?” I don’t mean to say it out loud, but it comes out anyway. “I’d totally forgotten about that,” I mumble. And now I feel shitty because if she’s spent the entire week stewing over this… I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right.
To be honest, I’d been so consumed with other things going on in my life, in my head, that the few times Jamie’s somehow popped into my mind, it’d been easy to push thoughts of her aside, to disregard them as nothing more than curiosity.
She lifts her chin slightly and looks right at me, and I notice her height for the first time. She’s short. Short enough that I’d have to bend my knees to kiss her. Andwhere the fuck did that thought come from? “So, you’re not mad at me?” she asks, and I shove the idea of kissing her way, way down.
At least until later.
When I’m alone.
Maybe.
I still don’t know what happened with her and Dean—myfriend—and even without that aspect, Jamie annoys the shit out of me. She’s too fucking blunt and obnoxious as hell, and…
And kind of cute—in that unassuming, pathetic, cliché-high-school-movie kind of way.
“Holden?” She’s still looking at me, waiting.
“No, I’m not mad,” I say, taking abigstep back and away fromdanger, danger, danger.
“Oh, okay.” She turns to the bush and starts cutting away. I do the same. Minutes pass, neither of us saying a word. But my eyes—my stupid, deceiving eyes—keep moving to her.
Peering at her.
Like a creep.
She breaks the silence. “It’s just that you haven’t spoken to me all week, so…”
Huh.I square my shoulders, pretending to focus on the task in front of me instead of the thoughts running circles in my mind. “You been keeping tabs on me, Taylor?”
“Taylor?”
I glance sideways at her. “That’s your last name, right?”
She nods, a slight smile breaking through as she drops a clipping to the ground between us. “You been keeping tabs on me,Eastwood?”
I shrug. “Do you want me to?”
Swear, her cheeks redden. “Not even for a second.”
* * *
When the hour’s up,we walk to my truck together while she removes the gloves and hands them back. “I found a bus route so—”
I stop beside the passenger door, rolling my eyes at her. “Shut up. Get in.”
She clearly hesitates, moving from one foot to the other, her eyes everywhere but on me. We spoke very little after her apology, so I don’t know what’s on her mind. If I’m being honest, I don’t know what I’m thinking either. All I know is that I’m confused—about a lot of things. Mainly about the girl standing in front of me with her nose wrinkled, no doubt trying to come up with a reason to say no. Or say yes. “It’ssoout of the way.”
I sigh. Out loud.Games. These are her games, her terms, round and round, and I don’t have the patience for it, so I repeat, “Shut up. Get in.”
She gets in the truck.
So do I.
And the second I’m in, my stomachgrowls.
