Page 45 of Deep End

“You are, though.”

This time, an affronted gasp makes its way out of me.

“Come on.” His smile is faint. “You’re always flushing or fidgeting. You either do your best to not look at me, or you stare.”

“I’m just a generally awkward person who—”

“You are. You’re also uncomfortable with men. This, though, is different. It doesn’t take a stratospheric ego to figure it out, not when your face is . . . You’re not good at hiding anything, Scarlett. I could tell when you didn’t know I existed, and I could tell when you became aware of me.”

My stomach sinks, and I want to deny it so,sobad, my throat itches. Instead I bury my face in my hands and pretend that this, the last two weeks, the last twoyears, didn’t happen. I’m going to fall asleep here, cradled within Poäng’s loving embrace, and wake up as a freshman, on the day of the NCAA finals.

A redo. I won’t mess up that inward, get those unmanageable curtain bangs, oreveracknowledge the existence of Lukas Blomqvist.

Who’s currently taking my wrists and pulling my hands down. He kneels in front of me, still managing to be imposing. I’m not a thin-boned, birdlike creature, but his hands swallow my entire forearms, and liquid heat crawls up my spine. It gets worse when hetransfers his hold to the right, and the knuckle of his free index finger slides to tilt up my chin, forcing me to meet his eyes.

I expect triumph, maybe some gloating. Not a genuinely puzzled, “Why are you embarrassed about this?”

I groan. “Maybe I just don’t want to shovel more fuel into some guy’s already overactive hubris furnace?”

“That’s not it.”

I squeeze my eyes shut. “It’s just never happened to me.”

“What has never happened?”

I swallow. This whole conversation is so . . .baring. “I’ve just never been attracted to someone that nearly everyone else in the universe seems to be attracted to.”

“You think Icarewhether people are attracted to me?” He sounds almost offended at the idea. But . . .

“Yes?”

“Why would I?”

“I . . . because?”

“No, seriously.” His accent seems to be a little thicker. “Why would I care abouteveryone in the universebeing attracted to me? What would I get from that?”

“The certainty that the sack of skin and meat you’re saddled with as you walk god’s green earth is pleasing to them, and that they will . . . I don’t know, have sex with you, if you want?”

His palm shifts upward, gripping the side of my face, the hinge of my jaw. His thumb rests right below my lower lip.

“Come on, Scarlett.” His mouth twitches. “You know who I want to have sex with.”

His low voice makes my entire body spark, and brooks no misunderstanding.

“Look at you.” His expression softens to something almost tender. “Is it so hard to believe that I saw you, and thought that you needed touching?”

I cannot breathe. “How?”

“I have no idea. But I saw you, and you made sense to me. And the more I looked, the more I knew how hard you work. How it paid off until it didn’t. How little you like chaos. You want to maintain control in every aspect of your life, and yet you are unraveling. And that wasbeforeI knew that you’re kinky as shit.”

The pad of his thumb presses against my bottom lip, a shock of heat to my system. I inhale, sandalwood and chlorine and beer flooding my lungs and my brain.

“You know what fucks with my head?” It must be a rhetorical question, because he continues: “You’re at ease with me. I don’t think you realize it, but you tend to move closer when others are around. Sometimes you look to me, for reassurance maybe. And we’re alone right now and there are no signs of distress, and—at some point you chose totrustme, and you get why that gets me going so hard, right?” His voice is a slow roll that starts in his chest, travels through our limbs, ends in the red of my cheeks, the spill between my legs.

For people like me, like him—likeus—trust is the real currency. I nod, hazy.

“Thank fuck,” he exhales, and my lips part against his thumb without meaning to.

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