Page 35 of Quarantine Crush
I turn back toward the elevator and push the button, my pulse racing. But it’s not Reed or his touch that has my heart trying to beat out of my chest. It’s the barely controlled rage simmering just below the surface of Knox’s hard expression. A rage that feels a whole hell of a lot like jealousy. Hope, the bitch, flares in my chest.
The doors slide open, and we step inside. I push the button for my floor and settle back against the railing. The tension is so thick I feel like it’s suffocating me, so I do the only thing I can think of.
“Is Reed like your personal Carole Baskin or something?” I blurt.
I expect him to laugh. Instead, he turns, his eyes dark, simmering pools of molten lava.
“Something like that,” he murmurs.
I step closer to him, my body drawn to him like a magnet. Knox watches with wild eyes. The elevator dips, and the doors slide open on my floor, preventing me from doing something stupid.
We break apart, filing out as the old woman who lives a few doors down steps on.
“Hello, Embry,” she says.
“Hi, Mrs. Henderson.” I wave to her as we pass, not even remotely surprised to see her tiny dog, Bon Jovi, inside a baby carrier that’s strapped to her chest.
“Ooh, who’s your friend?” she asks, not even trying to hide the fact that she’s checking Knox out.
“This is Knox,” I say, biting back a smile at the way he shifts uncomfortably beneath her hungry perusal. “He’s staying with me for the next couple of weeks.”
“Oh, you got yourself a little quarantine cutie, huh?” She eyes Knox and gives him a naughty wink. “If you decide you want to be essential with someone else, come find me.”
Knox chokes on a gasp, and I cover my mouth, turning away. “Have a good day, Mrs. Henderson,” I call.
I unlock the door to my apartment, pulling off my mask as soon as we step inside.
“Holy shit. These things are hot as hell,” I say, wiping my upper lip. “I don’t know how doctors and nurses handle that shit for their whole shift.”
Knox sets the pizza on the counter before pulling off his own mask. “I have a whole new kind of respect for them,” he agrees. “Also, let’s agree now to never speak of what Mrs. Henderson offered to me. Deal?”
I laugh. “Deal.”
We take turns washing our hands, and I chew on my lip nervously as I wait to see what kind of mood our run-in with Reed has put Knox in.
But he merely smiles at me, leaving me completely confused, before reaching around me to pull plates from the cabinet. I slip out from under his arm, not trusting myself to be this close to him right now, and pick up my wine glass from the breakfast bar.
“Pizza then bullshit? Or pizza and bullshit?”
“Pizza and bullshit,” I say, handing him my empty wine glass as I take the plates from him. “Top me off, bartender. I’ll get the cards.”
“With pleasure.”
Three glasses of wine and six hands of Bullshit later, two things have become painfully clear. First, Knox Jacobs is a terrible card player. And second, I can still read him like a book.
“Two sevens,” Knox says, placing his cards on the stack.
I don’t even bother to glance over at the third stack of cards. Technically, you need a third player for bullshit, but Knox and I found a way around that when his little brother, Christian, got tired of being forced to play as our third one day and left his hand sitting face down while he ran off to go swimming. Since then, we’ve always dealt “Christian’s hand” as our ghost player.
“Bullshit!”
“Son of a bitch,” Knox grumbles, flipping over his cards to reveal a seven and a jack. “How do you always know? And don’t say you can read my mind.”
I grin. “I can’t help it. I know you better than you know yourself, Knox Jacobs.”
His eyes narrow in playful suspicion. “I think you overestimate yourself, Hess.”
“Not a chance.” But even as I say the words, a small part of me wonders if they’re true. Somewhere in my drunken brain, the bitchier part of me reminds me that both of us have done a lot of living since he moved to London all those years ago.
