Page 53 of A Pizza My Heart

“You okay? You’re breathing pretty hard and I haven’t even really started working on cleaning this thing out. I don’t want you passing out on me or anything.”

“Oh, I-I…” I clear my throat. “Yep, I’m good. Just keep working on it. I still need to wash this sweat off me. I’m certain I stink.”

“Isthatwhat the smell is?”

I smack at him with my free hand. “Stop it. I don’t smellthatbad.”

“You sure about that?”

“Ugh.” I groan. “Just fix me up, doc.”

Foster concentrates on cleaning out my wound, making certain all the dried blood, sand, and debris is gone.

I concentrate on breathing, something that’s becoming increasingly hard to do with him so close.

His focus is trained on my arm, mine trained on him, on the way his too-long lashes kiss his cheeks. The way his freckles dart across the bridge of his nose. The way his brows pinch together when he’s concentrating hard, his bottom lip sucked in between his teeth. The way his overly long hair falls across his forehead.

I don’t notice I’ve reached out until my fingers brush against his soft locks…and by then it’s too late to pretend I’m not doing what I’m doing.

His breaths quicken when my fingers push his hair aside. I don’t remove my hand right away, though we both know I’ve long since finished the job I set out to do. Instead, I let my digits roam through his overgrown brown curls.

I almost forgot his hair curled the longer it grew, and how boyishly cute it makes him look. It’s been so long since I’ve seen him and even longer since I’ve seen him with hair this length.

“I forgot your hair curled,” I confess, fingers still aimlessly plunging through the waves. We both know they’ve overstayed their welcome, but I can’t bring myself to pull away.

He doesn’t complain, so I don’t try any harder to move them.

“I think maybe I’ll take you up on that haircut after all,” he says, so quietly I almost don’t hear him over the erratic beating of my heart. “I’m almost done.”

With reluctance, I drop my hand back to the counter, trying to focus on anything but the fact that I just played with his hair for far too long.

I mean, I’m a hairstylist. It’s totally normal for me to play with people’s hair, right? It wasn’tthatweird.

We fall into a silence as Foster works to finish cleaning my wound and I work to regulate my erratically beating heart.

“Sunscreen and honeysuckle.”

“Huh?”

His eyes flit to mine for only a moment, but it’s enough to see the fire dancing within his green gaze. My breath catches at the intensity.

What the heck is happening? First his lips and now this?

His tongue darts out as he wets his lips then focuses back on my arm. “Sunscreen and honeysuckle. You were worried that you smell. You don’t. You smell like—”

“Sunscreen and honeysuckle. I heard you.”

He presses his lips together like he wants to say more but thinks better of it.

I watch as he applies the antibiotic ointment. Then the dressing.

He moves away from me, and I can’t help the cold that settles into my bones at his absence.

“All done. That will be roughly five thousand dollars.”

“Five thousand? For some Band-Aids and gauze?”

“Don’t forget the ointment. And”—he waggles his fingers—“my magic touch. That part is priceless.”

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