Page 16 of Make You Love Me
She giggles before remembering she despises me. “You’re avoiding the question.”
“No. I’m hopefully making you hate me less.”
“I don’t hate you.”
My throat tosses out ayeah-rightscoff as if I have no control over my body.
“Truly,” she insists. “I just don’t trust you with my brother’s heart.”
Can’t blame her.
“He seems to have a softness for you.” She adds a light blue shower curtain and matching bath rugs to her arms. “Or a high tolerance, depending on how you look at it.”
It comes out like she’s talking through something she doesn’t understand, so I choose to believe she didn’t mean it as an insult. After all, she’d protect Jordan with her life and only sees good in him. If I allow myself to see her point of view, she’s right to guard him. Heisone of the purest, kindest, sweetest souls, and I’m none of those things.
Chapter 5
Jordan
We’re here,” Josie says as she enters the front door.
“We? Who’d you pick up at the—Nora.” At the sight of her entering the living room, my system snatches the air from my lungs and slaps me in the face with it. I’m not ready. I mean, I’ve been begging to see her, but I haven’t prepared my heart for the jolt her presence always gives me.
While I search for a thread of control, my eyes take in every inch of her. Her soft white sweater, cropped at the waist of her black high-rise jeans. The light freckles on her nose and the lone mark above her top lip. Her long dark hair tied up into a ponytail, exposing the soft skin of her neck and my favorite place to kiss. She’s holding bags and something else, but I can’t focus on it because her glistening eyes have met mine and put me in a chokehold.
“How did you two—”
“It’s a long story,” Josie dismisses, but Nora pipes up to fill in the blanks.
“She tried to carry the grocery store home in a few bags, but some of them ripped. I witnessed the disaster and saved the day with my car.”
Josie grins, but it looks painful. “And she was patient enough to let me pick through a couple of yard sales on the way.”
Seeing the two of them together for the first time mesmerizes me, but my attention keeps gravitating back to Nora. She’s a beacon of light in the shadows the accident cast over my days, and I’m captivated, drawn to her like a wayward ship in the night.
“I heard voices. Everything okay?” Sergeant Montgomery asks as he exits the bathroom, whipping me out of my stupor.
“Yes. It’s—”
“Hi, there.” Josie steps around the kitchen counter and tosses me a confused glance. “I didn’t know we had a visitor. I was about to ask where Jackson disappeared to,” she says.
“Something came up at VETS,” Sergeant Montgomery answers, saving me from having to muscle up the words. “I arrived to see how Jordan was getting along before he left.”
“That’s great.”
“I should get going. Jordan, I’m glad to see you’re upright and all in one piece. You had us worried.”
I shake his hand, grateful to call him my friend and sergeant. But with Nora moving around the kitchen in my periphery, I’m not fully present in the conversation.
“Tell the guys we’ll celebrate big when I get back,” I say at last.
“What? You’re—”
“Thank you so much for stopping by…Hayes, is it?” Josie waves for Sergeant to follow her. “Let me walk you out.”
I don’t like the look on her face or the warning her eyes are giving him, but they step outside together (also odd), leaving me and Nora alone. She looks over the bags at me, then around theroom. It feels less empty now that her sweet vanilla scent has filled the space.
“How have you been?” I ask for lack of anything else coming to mind. Her beauty has a way of knocking me senseless with or without brain injuries.
