Page 72 of The Art of Catching Feelings

This was a time to let it go. “I think I’m learning to keep up.”

“Oh, you’re averyquick study.” He grinned at her. “A baseball savant. Although I’ve been thinking about it, and why the Red Sox? Why not the Reds?”

“Are you workshopping my period joke fromweeksago? Count this as a fatal flaw.”

“Fatal?Come on. I think about you a lot. That can’t be a flaw.”

That brought Daphne up short. For some reason, she’d never considered that Chris might spend as much time daydreaming about her as she did about him. Even as they’d been texting, even once they hooked up in real life, she’d just assumed…she didn’t know. There wasn’t much to think about when it came to her.Not interesting or charismatic. It stuck in her head, even if she knew Justin had been being an asshole. The most cocktail-party-story-fodder thing that had ever happened to her was when she’d been onSportsCenterfor heckling Chris, which he’d be the last person to be impressed by.

Daphne wanted to commission an essay from him about that one sentence—I think about you a lot. She wanted to know every specific detail. But she also didn’t want to come across as needy or desperate or insecure, even if she was feeling like all of those things. So she had to let that one go, too.

“Okay,” she said. “You got me. You want to know yourrealfatal flaw?”

“I’m on the edge of my seat,” he said.

She leaned closer to him, not intentionally brushing his hand against her breasts, but not mad about it, either. From the way his gaze dropped to her mouth, she knew he was as affected by that brief touch as she was.

“You can’t do this,” she whispered. He was still watching her mouth as she pursed her lips, letting out a bright, clear whistle.

A smile cracked over his face. “Oh, thank god,” he said. “I thought you were going to say my abs.”

“How can yourabsbe a flaw?”

“That they’re so intimidating,” he said. “Or so hot. I don’t know, I’m insecure about my abs.”

She ran her hand over the flat, hard plane of his stomach. “Sure,” she said. “That’s why you’re always keeping your shirt on. You’re obviously plagued with self-doubt.”

“It feels good to be so seen.”

“They could use alittlemore definition, you know,” she said, tracing the outline of his muscle, liking the way he automatically clenched beneath even that light touch. “You should see some of the covers of my romance novels. Washboard stomachs, the lot of them.”

“Is that so?”

“Mmm-hmm,” she said. “Just trying to give you something to aspire to.”

He leaned forward, grabbing something off the coffee table. She saw what it was only after he’d uncapped it and held it out to her—a black Sharpie.

“Show me,” he said. “Draw me like one of your romance covers.”

Daphne gave him a dubious look, likeare you serious?But he was grinning at her, and she took the marker from him, surveyinghis body like it was her canvas. “Okay, I don’t know what crunches or burpees or whatever are going to get you these results—that’s not my area of expertise. But if you want a glimpse of the final product, you’ll want it to look something…” She started drawing wobbly squares on his stomach in a rough approximation of a six-pack. “…like…” This was fun, actually, she was really getting into her artist’s rendition. “…this.”

She tried adding some shading in the lower corner of each square, but Chris almost doubled over laughing, sending the marker line shooting sideways across his skin. She frowned at him in admonishment.

“I can’t be held responsible for what you’ll look like if you mess up my blueprint.”

“Sorry,” he said, but spasmed in a sudden laugh again when she went back to her shading. “I’m ticklish there.”

“I thought you were an athlete,” she said. “I thought you took your conditioning seriously.”

“I do, I do,” he said. “Keep going. I don’t want uneven abs.”

She managed to shade all six squares, even though there were a few jagged places where the marker had skipped as he tried to hold back a laugh. When she finished, she reached for the cap, but he grasped her wrist to stop her.

“I should get to draw something on you,” he said. “It’s only fair.”

THIRTY-TWO

Chris could feel Daphne’s pulse jump beneath his fingers.

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