AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I want to touch him.
“Then why did you?” He doesn’t sound pissed, or like he thinks I’m crazy. Just curious.
“I don’t know.”
“You do.” His voice is gentle, but there’s a push in it.
I wrap my arms around my middle and dart a glance over at him. “I don’t.”
Mirroring me, he folds his arms across his chest, making the muscles in his arm bunch and strain against his white shirt. I hug myself tighter when the same need sneaks up on me. “I’m curious.”
“About?”
“You didn’t want me close at the bar, but here, you have no problem touching me.”
“Maybe I just didn’t want you smelling the cat piss I stepped into.” The words come easily, the self-deprecating tone surprising me because I never talk like that. I’m serious. I don’t joke.
Ever.
His lip twitches. “Cat piss?”
My face heats and I jerk my gaze away as a blush sweeps over every inch of my skin, warming me from the inside out. “Yes. In case you thought I had some kind of accident.”
It didn’t take long to wash in the bathroom after I’d drank the coffee and finished the cookies. Since there was nothing I could do about my skittish eyes, I combed the tangles out of my hair with my fingers, washed my feet, and avoided the mirror after that.
“I wasn’t thinking that,” he says. “I barely smelled it.”
I turn to him with a raised brow. “Liar.”
He makes his eyes wide. “It’s this lip-reading ability of mine. You gain one gift, you lose another. In my case—” He taps the bridge of his nose “—It’s my sense of smell.”
“I wanted to hug you.” The words burst out of me, and for a second I hope I just said them in my head.
A long moment passes in silence. “That wasn’t a hug.”
“No. It wasn’t.” I clear my throat and turn away to face the picture again. “I don’t hug anyone. So that was all I could do.”
A pause. “Then why did you want to hug me?”
My gaze locks on his hazel eyes in the picture. The sadness makes the need sneak up on me again. It’s so loud that I have to look away so I don’t touch him again.
Maybe I just feel sorry for him living in an apartment more empty than full.
Pity is a good reason to want to hug a stranger. Isn’t it?
“Lily? Why did you want to hug me?”
I part my lips to tell him it’s pity. But that isn't what comes out of my mouth.
“Because I knew you needed me to.”
Silence.
“You think I’m crazy,” I say, too afraid to look into his face because I know I’ll see the judgment reflected in his eyes.
“No.”
But he doesn’t say why not.
