Page 195 of Cloudy With a Chance of Bad Decisions

For…me?

He was…

Fuck.

And here I’d been an asshole, thinking that he’d run out on me because I told him about my wild, sad youth. And he was down at the lake—the place he’d told me he would never voluntarily go—voluntarily…going?

Because he wanted tohelpme.

Because hecaredabout me more than he cared about his own discomfort.

No one had ever—fuck. No one had ever gone to these lengths for me. I didn’t know what to do with it. I guess now I understood why George had reacted the way he had when I’d made him a midnight picnic. Though…hisgesture was way better than mine had been.

This wasn’t a sad block of cheese, an old blanket, and stolen wine.

This was…everything.

The balloon popped.

And the realization that I was desperately, irrevocably in love with Georgehit me like a puck to the face. I couldn’t laugh. Couldn’t smile. Couldn’t do anything.

I was frozen.

Broken.

Unable to get my brain to work.

Eyes wet, I covered my face with one hand, squinting up into the sun in the hopes that it would conceal how close I was to losing it.

I didn’t want to feel this way.

To be so undone, especially with such a large audience.

Getting caught having sex was one thing, embarrassing yes, but—this was…fuck. This was a new kind of humiliation. Like my chest had been sawed in two and my heart was out in the open for everyone to see.

“One sec.” I thought George was talking to me, so I nodded, unable to look at him, my hand still over my face. I quickly discovered that he’d actually been talking to Joe—not me. Because a short time later, after some clumsy sloshing through the water, sun-warm, damp gloves wrapped around my free wrist.

George dragged me away from the edge of the water and back across the sand.

Dazed and blind, I let him maneuver me into one of the sun loungers June and I had adopted as our own. He fussed over the umbrella, making sure I was in the shade—even though he was the one that was slowly turning into a tomato.

I heard him.

Still unable to look.

My face turned away, body curled in on itself. Making myself as small as I could. Wanting to disappear.

A cool water bottle was forced into my free hand as George yanked my shoes off and pulled my feet up onto the lounger. Only then, did I remove my hand, peeking at him warily, my chest this awful combination of full and empty all at once.

He stood back to survey his work, nodding to himself when he’d met his own approval.

“Relax,” he commanded with a bossy point of his elegant finger. “And take a nap.”

My heart wheezed.

Which was—a confusing, horrible, wonderful feeling.

No one had ever cared about me like this.

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