Page 15 of Don't Scare Me, My Love

I raised my left eyebrow as well. “Why would I?”

“Many people do. Even my mom keeps bugging me about when I’m finally going to settle down and get a house and stuff. Most guys I dated thought it was weird.”

My heart skipped a beat. I tried to avoid the subject of dating. He wasn’t just a hot customer anymore. He was an employee now—although it felt more like we were colleagues because the whole boss image just wasn’t my thing. “I think what you’re doing is…” I put on a smile. “… intriguing.”

Just like that, we were back to flirting. We tried so hard not to do it for the first half of the shift, but it was obviously only a matter of time.

“Intriguing? Okay.” Nicholas nodded slowly. “So the idea of going out with a weird guy like me wouldn’t scare you?”

“I’m hardly afraid of anything.” I shook my head. “But that’s a different subject. So, no, that idea wouldn’tscareme.”

“Wait, wait, wait.” He held up his hand. “You’re telling me you’re not scared of anything? After you screamed like crazy yesterday when you first saw me?”

“I only screamed because I poked the door handle in my back, and it hurt.”

“That’s a lie.”

“No, it isn’t.”

He opened his mouth but paused for a second. “Okay, then, what about horror movies?”

“They’re fun. But, like, in an I-laugh-a-lot-when-I’m-watching-one kind of way.”

“Spiders?”

I shook my head.

“Not even the dark? Everyone’s afraid of the dark.”

It was true that I couldn’t see well at night, but it wasn’t something to be afraid of if you were prepared for it. It was more annoying than anything else. “Not really.”

He stared at me in disbelief. “That’s… I can’t believe that nothing scares you.”

“Why?” My head snapped back. “And why do you want me to be scared?”

He held his breath for a moment as if I had caught him red-handed. “It’s not that Iwantyou to be scared. I just… I was so afraid of so many things before I started facing them. It’s hard for me to imagine someone not feeling that way.”

“Aren’t those two different kinds of being scared?”

“Yes, and no. At least, they feel similar to me.” He put both his hands on the counter and pushed himself up slightly, lifting his feet off the floor for a second. “I’m sorry. It’s stupid.”

“No. Now I want to know. Even though I’ve forgotten how we got to that subject.”

He turned fully to face me. “Okay. What do the types of scary have in common, you ask? Simple.” He spoke with such confidence now, as if he had just accepted that I needed to be taught a lesson about why I should crave this feeling. He brought his hands in front of me, palms up. “There is the kind of ‘scary’for things that are actually a threat.” He raised his right palm. “That’s the ‘scary’ that tries to keep you alive. And then there’s that kind of ‘scary’ that you deliberately seek out.” He raised his left palm. “Like in horror movies and stuff. That’s the ‘scary’ thatmakesyou feel alive.”

“Still doesn’t sound like the same thing to me.”

“I like to think of the second as a good training for the first. My brain knows that nothing can happen to me right now, but it gets to practice for the moments that are real-life scary.”

He locked his eyes on me, and I couldn’t help but feel a powerful wave of affection for him wash over my body.

“That,I understand. Though I still have to admit that it doesn’t change the fact that I just don’t get scared.”

“Neither way?”

“I’m sorry.”

For a moment, we both stared at the counter in front of us when?—

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