Page 78 of Hooked
Eat breakfast!
Have more sex!
“Uh, thanks. I appreciate it.” She looked down at herself. “If you really don’t mind, I think I’ll take the coffee to go. Honestly, it’s the dirty socks that are bugging me the most, but yes, it all feels kind of gross.”
He laughed. “Completely get it.” He poured black coffee into the travel mug. “Next time you should bring a change of clothes and a toothbrush. That way we can sleep in.”
Okay! Let me go get that now, I only live a couple of blocks away!
Tayla walked to the counter and added sugar from the blue-and-white speckled enamel bowl on the counter.
Jeremy put his arm around her and kissed the top of her head. “You know, you still look gorgeous even without all the makeup.”
“I like makeup.”
“And you look great with it. I’m just saying you still look sexy as hell in my shirt and not much else. You sure you don’t want to—”
“SOKA called me back yesterday,” she blurted out. “They want me back for another interview on Thursday.”
His silence was like a gut punch.
Tayla blinked back unexpected tears. “Jeremy?”
He backed away and leaned against the counter opposite the coffee maker. “Did you come over to tell me that last night?”
“I don’t know why I came over last night. I wasn’t thinking—”
“But you could have told me last night.” His face was carefully blank. “And instead you flirted with me and had sex with me and stayed over and you didn’t tell me that you got called back for another interview at a company two hundred miles away.”
“I’m sorry.” Regret sat like lead in her stomach. “I told you from the beginning—”
“I know.” His voice was bitter. “Trust me. I know.”
She didn’t know why she asked the question, but she had to. “Do you regret last night?”
Jeremy didn’t speak. He walked over, poured a cup of coffee, and picked it up. “I don’t know how I feel.” He started toward the stairs. “I need to take a shower. Just shut the door on your way out. I’ll see you, Tayla.”
He walked upstairs, and he didn’t look back. Tayla sipped the coffee he’d poured for her.
Black, strong, and sweet. Exactly like she wanted.
The bitterness in her mouth was all her own doing.
Jeremy droveout to Cary’s farm after the shop closed that night. He was supposed to do orders, but he couldn’t think straight. He didn’t get a dozen flirty or funny texts from Tayla. He hadn’t texted her. She hadn’t texted him.
He was organizing his climbing gear when he realized he had a set of cams and a rope from Cary’s stuff.
“You drove all the way out here to give me three cams and a rope?” Cary frowned when Jeremy handed his stuff through the truck window.
“Yeah.”
“Bullshit.”
Jeremy put his truck in park and turned off the engine, listening to the wind sweep over the orange groves. The scent of blossoms was heavy in the air. It smelled like one of Tayla’s perfumes.
“I’m all fucked up, Cary.”
“Yeah, I figured.” Cary stepped back. “Come on. My mom will feed you, and then we can talk.”
