Page 88 of Nodus Tollens
“If you make fun of the mess in here, I’m kicking you out.”
Grinning, he placed his hand in mine. Then, flicking the light switch on, I pulled him inside as my heart hammered wildly.
“You mean the clutter of stuff you have on your desk?” He joked behind me. “I happen to find it cute, Blue.”
Closing the door behind him, he released my hand and stalked straight toward my desk, and immediately, my heart flatlined. I was messy. An organized messy, but to someone else, it would just look plain messy. He stopped at the cluttered table and grinned playfully at the random crap I had lying all over it.
“My beautiful, messy girl.” He mumbled.
“Hey, now.” I pouted. “I thought I told you to not make fun of me.”
Picking up a pen with a squishy blueberry hanging off the end of it, he chuckled.
“God, you’re perfect.” He shook his head as he placed the pen back down.
I wanted to wrap myself around him. I wanted to jump in his arms and kiss him until I had no breath left in me, but I loved watching him. His eyes continued to sweep over my desk until he landed on a book.
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, to be exact, and he immediately reached for it.
“What’s this?” He asked while flipping it around to look at the back, then turned it back over.
My lip found itself trapped underneath my teeth as I slowly walked over to where he was.
“A book of words, more or less.”
“Huh.” He opened it and started reading. “Ozurie?” He pronounced with bunched brows and mouth moving as he read over the definition.
“Feeling torn between the life you want and the life you have.”
I knew most words and their meanings. Hayes looked surprised as his eyes lifted from the book and connected with mine.
“I’ve never heard of this book or that word.”
“Most people probably don’t. The words correlate with the emotions that we as humans experience. We all, at some point, share the same relatable feelings. We just don’t have words for them…So, the author created his own words for those moments.”
Intense eyes watched me closely, and then when he flipped the page, his eyes went back to the book. “Do you know all the meanings?”
“Most.”
“Do you have a favorite word?” He asked without lifting his eyes off the page.
I pondered his question for a few seconds. Multiple words came to mind, but I couldn’t decide on one. Not when I connected with so many of them.
“Um, I have a few.”
Nodding, he flipped through the pages with curious, inquisitive eyes. Watching his intrigue made my heart soar. He looked interested in what he was reading, and it made the valley between my legs tingle. There was something extremely attractive about a man engrossing himself in something that captivated you. He wasn’t just doing it to appease me, but I could see just how much he was absorbing each word, just as I did when I first read them. Plus, seeing him holding a book and reading wasn’t a bad view either.
“You must really like this book.”
I watched as he dragged the tip of his finger over some scribbled words that I had written on the page. His stare softened, causing a cloud of nervousness to hover over me.
“It understands me, I guess. Better than anyone. Better than myself, actually.”
Until you came along.I wanted to add but continued. “It helped me out a lot when I was… struggling. It was therapeutic, in a sense, to connect with the words. It’s like he took the emotions straight from me and made them into a book.”
His eyes snapped up from the book and collided with mine. The force of it almost had me falling backward onto my bed. His perfect jaw was clenched tightly, and ever so slowly, he closed the book.
“Can I read it?”
