Page 51 of Now to Forever

“Wait!” I shout. He stills, looking at me but keeping a hand on the door. My throat is so constricted it’s a physical feat to get the next words out. “I’m sorry,” I rasp. He slams the door and turns to me, waiting. “When you look at me that way you look at me—I don’t know what to do with it. Making you swim was probably not the best consequence.”

He walks to where I’m standing at the back of his truck. “What way do I look at you?”

“Like—” He steps so close to me I can feel the warmth of his breath and smell the mint. I pull my head back, trying to find more air to breathe, but stand firm. “Like you want to keep looking. Like you think I’m . . .”

“You’re what?”

I swallow. “Worth it.”

“You are.”

Instead of gouging his eyes out like I want, I stay completely calm and still, trying like hell to ignore the ridiculous dance my heart and breath and belly are doing. “Keep saying things like that and you’ll be back in the lake.”

He drops his chin to his chest, shaking his head as he puffs out a laugh. “That was shit as far as apologies go.”

“Noted.”

“I want to keep looking at you,” he says, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “Like you’re worth it.”

“And if I say no?”

His tongue darts out and swipes across his bottom lip. He’s got scruff on his jaw. The dark hair on his head is slightly disheveled. “You going to?”

I bite back a smile, looking away from his face. I should tell him I don’t care what he does with that ugly mug of his. That he needs to leave me the hell alone and fix his kid himself. That I can feed my own birds and demo my own house. That I’m leaving in months, and this has nowhere to go but over. I should say all these things, but before I can, Ford runs his knuckles along my jaw and stops them under my chin, lifting just enough my eyes are forced to meet his. He leans in, so close I could lick him like a lollipop if I stuck my tongue out. My body responds like a damn turncoat. All heat and trembles in places I should definitely not be heating and trembling. “Maybe.”

“Ah,” he says, voice low and a whispery breeze across my skin as his knuckles drag—slowly—down the side of my neck. “And if I said I’ve been thinking about kissing you?”

“I would say your thoughts do nothing for me.” Translation: Your thoughts are making me hot and bothered as hell in my front yard next to these stupid bird feeders.

I’m no good for anyone, but God I want Ford—desperately. I don’t know how to let someone get close, but every single time he gets vulnerable and lays it all on the line, he excavates everything I’ve ever felt for him, and despite all the hurt and heartache, I want to be as close to him as a second layer of skin.

If he kissed me, I would melt. If he said he wanted to slam me like a hammer, I would let him. Until I splintered. Repeatedly.

Stroking my skin with his thumb, he leans in close and says, “Good thing that’s not what I’m thinking.” He drops his hand, cool as a cucumber as I choke on air. “I barely know you. I need you to ask me to ask you out on a date.”

“Ha!” I take a step away from him for more oxygen. “Is that your way of asking me out?”

A faint curve pulls at the edge of his mouth. “Not this time. I’m not doing all the chasing this go around.”

My eyebrows pinch; he laughs.

“You heard me. I want us to try, but it can’t be like it was before. You pushing me away and me ignoring it. I know you feel what I’m feeling—know you want me to keep showing up—but I need to hear it.”

“A date with the Golden Boy,” I say, pulling my shoulders back to compensate for the wanton-quality of my voice. “Would ruin my reputation.”

“Good to know, Viper.” He smirks. Like he knows what’s in my head. “I’ll wait. You just say the words.” We look at each other a beat longer, then he takes another step back, pointing his thumbover his shoulder into the house. “Show me what you and Wren did today.”

He follows me inside, not bothering to hide his amusement when he sees the marker-covered floor. “Wren and her acrostic poems. Hand me a marker.”

I do; he writes the letters S-C-O-T-T-Y down in a line. I take another one, writing F-O-R-D.

I’m still writing when he stands to leave. “I have to get home.”

I walk him out, disappointed as I lean against the door. “Thanks for the birdseed cages.”

He chuckles, crossing the porch and turning at the bottom of the steps. “They’re suet cakes. Woodpeckers like them.”

“Anything to keep your harem happy.”

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