Page 19 of Chasing You

I just smile back at her, not having anything to say. “You are…”

“Remarkable?” she suggests with a small smile before her eyes catch on something behind me. “Oh my god, that’s the pool?!”

“Remarkable,” I mumble when she’s out of earshot.

I feel so connected to this girl in such an absurd way. But I just feel like our lives were meant to collide. Like we were meant to meet. Like the universe coordinated with my bosses just so I could stumble into that one bar the night that she was working.

“Where can I get changed?” she asks, turning around to look at me with those wide eyes of hers.

“First door on the right,” I say as she skips past me, eager to get her clothes off.

Good lord.

I scrub a hand over my face. There’s no way I can get in a pool with this girl. Nonetheless, I turn and make my way to my bedroom, stripping off my pants and changing into a pair of swim shorts, ignoring the semi I’m sporting just at the thought of seeing her body wet. As I’m walking back out toward the pool, I hear Marina’s voice through the door. “Miles?”

“Yeah?”

“Could you give me a hand?” Her voice is timid, unlike how I know her to be.Because you know her sooo well, idiot.

“Sure,” I say, twisting the door handle to let myself into the room. She’s standing in front of the mirror in the corner, wearing nothing but a small red bikini. I nearly die on sight. My feet are glued to the floor once more.

“Could you just untangle that strap around the back for me?”

“Yeah,” I say in a breath. But I don’t move, not as my eyes roam over the view of her through the mirror. Of her curlsbrushing her bare shoulders. Of her stomach moving ever so slightly with every breath she takes.

“Please,” she says with a little smile.

“Oh, shit, sorry,” I say, moving into the room until I’m standing at her back, staring down at her toned body.

“I can feel a twist in the back there,” she says, her hand coming around to feel the strap that I can see is twisted just like she thought. It’s more than twisted, it’s completely tangled.

“I’m going to have to retie it,” I say. “And to do that, I need to untie it.”

“So he’s more than just a pretty face,” she teases, and it relieves some of the tension in my shoulders.

She grabs a hold of the bikini in the front, her hands cupping her breasts and I don’t know where to look, so I just focus on the strap, on pulling at the little bow until it comes free. She giggles from her spot in front of me.

“What?” I ask.

“For a hotshot, you seem so unsure of yourself.”

“You, uh…” I pull my focus into untangling the strap and retying it around her back. “I’m usually not this fucking dumbstruck, I swear,” I laugh. “But you seem to confuse my entire being.”

“Hm,” she bites her lip. And I only know because I failed at keeping my focus on her back. Instead, I’m looking at her face through the mirror. “I’ve been told in the past I’m a bit too direct, but never confusing.”

I firmly tie the bow back in place, my knuckles grazing down her spine before I pull away. “I think that might be the confusing part.”

“What part is confusing you? The part where I’m not afraid to tell you that I like you? That I kind of wished you’d left that bow untied and thrown me on this bed? Or is it the fact that you can’t figure out if I’m like this with every pretty boy that walks into the bar, and you don’t exactly know what to do with that?”

“I’m going to go with all of the above,” I say, and she just smiles before turning around in my arms.

“Well, let me remedy that for you.” She lays her palms on my bare chest, her hazel eyes finding the birthmark that sits just below my collarbone. She runs a delicate finger over the dark spot before dragging her hands up until they’re wrapped around my neck. “I don’t act like this with every pretty boy that walks into the bar. In fact, I usually don’t give them so much as a second glance. But there is something about you that just draws me in, and I don’t know how to escape it.” She frowns. “I’m not sure that I even want to.”

Somehow, my hand involuntarily found her waist in that conversation, but I move it with purpose now, trailing my fingertips up her side until my palm is cupping the side of her face.

“And I know it’s slightly insane that I wish I was naked right now,” she continues. “But I can’t help it.”

“I think you should stop talking now,” I say, my face inches from hers all of a sudden.

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