Page 38 of Lessons in Forgiving
With my eagerness to keep the girls from interacting with Henry (because that had gone so terribly well this morning), came the fact I was about .2 seconds away from running into his chest. I screeched to a halt just in time, and my hands merely grazed his chest to steady myself before I rushed them back to my sides.
I didn’t want to dwell on how he’d felt under my touch, how the brief contact made me remember every time he’d been at my mercy, or I’d been at his.
“Eyes up, remember?” His smug voice called. I’d already slammed the door shut behind me, so I was essentially trapped.
Henry did not attempt to take a step back, and he was everywhere. In the soft gust that fanned against my nose whenhe huffed, the air that smelled like him: expensive, elegant. Like pinewood, citrus and bad ideas.
“What’s the rush?” he asked.
I looked up to find his green eyes gleaming with amusement. I narrowed my own, hoping the glare would be more prominent than the light blush of my cheeks.
“Usually.” I began despite our closeness. Despite the fact I should ask him to give me space, and despite the fact I did not really want him to. “Once someone rings, they take a few steps back to wait a safe distance away from the door. Have you ever heard of that?”
He finally did take that step back, and his lips spread into a wide grin. “Never,” he insisted, gesturing to his car before taking the lead. Throwing a glance across his shoulder, he arched a brow. “Are yousurethey do that?”
With a smile, I got going. “Positive.”
Henry’s black polo was casually tugged into tailored pants in the same color, the belt around his waist and the watch around his wrist his only accessories. Walking after him, I gave myself a single second to marvel at how great his ass looked in them, then moved on to think about more mundane things.
Like how the year had finally moved along enough to make the light breeze feel like a warm hug. Or that I could still hear birds singing in the trees. That we’d both left our homes without jackets.
The simple things.
But I couldn’t help it. My eyes dipped lower again, really just for a second. Which didn’t matter much—it was still one too many, and when my gaze snapped back up, Henry was already waiting for me to get in the car. Our eyes connected. A knowing smile placed on his lips.
When I slipped past him to get into the passenger seat, what I really wanted to do was turn around and hide in my bedroom for the rest of the night. Die of mortification.
He closed the door behind me, strolled to the other side, and I was preparing for the comments I knew were coming. But he didn’t say anything when he got in, started the car and began driving.
It didn’t take long for him to break, though. “It is my bestasset,” he said, nodding in agreement with I-don’t-know-what.
“Wow,” I sighed theatrically, though there was no point in denying it. “You managed a whole two minutes without bringing that up.” I shook my head with a snicker, glancing at him. “And you look about five seconds away from bursting if you don’t let all of your terrible puns out.” My tone was matter-of-fact before I deadpanned, “Great.”
“I have nothing else to add,” he quipped, one hand up in surrender, the other on the steering wheel. “Your attempt at subtlety just felt a bit half-assed.”
Throwing myself back into the passenger seat, I groaned so loudly, the music coming from the speakers became inaudible. “I’ve changed my mind,” I whined. “I want to go home.”
Henry huffed in amusement, eyes on me for a brief moment. “Too late, charm.”
I know, I know. I shouldn’t drink on the job.
But the more time I spent with the HBU soccer team in this dingy bar, the less I considered it a job.
Merely something that could enhance my work. Make it shine with meticulous details. Like the fact Henry’s drink of choice would’ve been a negroni but he’d opted for water tonight. Or that he knew the bartender so well, he’d been gone talking to him for twenty minutes now.
Dylan had practically thrown himself on the empty seat once Henry had gotten up, and not because he’d been so eager to talk to me. The wide grin on his face told me he was well aware of how Henry would feel about it.
You’d think once the guy you hated started dating your sister, you might reconsider your own feelings toward him. You’d think perhaps the two boys would make up forhersake, at least.
From what social media had told me in my endless hours of online research (falling down the rabbit hole of his sister’s profiles for clues about the past year I hadn’t been part of), Dylan treated Athalia the way any other brother might hope for his sister to be treated.
Not Henry, though. He seemed to still have Dylan written down as enemy number one.
And he was sitting right next to me. Michael, the team’s captain, on my other side.
“Paula!” Michael sighed, resting his head on my shoulder. “We’ve missed you terribly,” he whined, six beers into the evening. A drop of alcohol in his system, and Michael lived up to his dirty-blond hair and turned into a golden retriever.
I snorted in amusement, patting his head clumsily. “Yeah? Are you sure it’s me you missed, and not just my protein cookies?”
