Good Girl Complex(Avalon Bay #1)(32)

“Sorry,” I say. I take the stick from the dog when she brings it to me, then toss it for her again. “Distracted with school stuff.”

It doesn’t take long for us to wear the puppy out and head back to Cooper’s house. He puts his shirt on, a faded Billabong tee so thin it molds to each muscle of his perfect chest. It’s getting harder and harder not to think very un-friend-like thoughts. Which means it’s definitely time for me to go.

Yet when he asks if I want a ride back to my dorm, I find a way to refuse without quite saying no. Instead we end up in his studio, a detached garage on the side of the property that contains table saws, machines, and an array of other tools. There are racks of raw wood on the walls. The floor is covered in sawdust. At the far end of the space, I glimpse several pieces of finished wooden furniture.

“You made these?” I run my hands over a coffee table, a chair, a skinny bookshelf. There’s also a chest of drawers and a pair of end tables. Everything is done in varying finishes, but they all have a modern coastal aesthetic. Clean and simple. Elegant.

“Sort of my side hustle,” he says with obvious pride. “It’s all reclaimed wood. Stuff I find. I break it down to its basic forms, then repurpose it, bring out what it was meant to be.”

“I’m impressed.”

He shrugs, brushing off the compliment as though I’m merely being polite.

“No, I mean it. Cooper, you have real talent. You could make serious money off this. I know a dozen of my mom’s friends who would tear through this place like it was a Saks trunk sale, throwing money at you.”

“Yeah, well.” He hides his face while putting away tools and rearranging his workbench, as if he needs to keep his hands busy. “Without the capital to quit my day job, I don’t have time to churn out the kind of volume I’d need to turn it into any kind of sustainable business. I sell a few things here and there. Make a little extra cash we can use to fix up the house. It’s just a hobby.”

I plant one hand on my hip. “You have to let me buy something.”

Before I can blink, he walks over and throws a drop cloth over the pieces. He won’t meet my eyes as he warns, “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” I say blankly.

“Don’t do that. The second you start looking at me as a project, this”—he gestures between us—“stops working. I don’t need your help. I didn’t show you this to get money out of you.”

“I know.” I grab his arm, forcing him to look at me. “This isn’t charity. You’re not a pity case, Cooper. I consider it an investment in an undiscovered talent.”

He snorts softly.

“Seriously. When you blow up, I’m going to tell everyone I got there first. Rich girls love being trendsetters.”

He studies me, his dark eyes searching. He has an intensity about him, a natural aura that’s both magnetic and dangerous. The more I tell myself to keep my distance, the closer I’m drawn in.

Finally, a reluctant smile surfaces. “Fucking clones.”

“Good. You think about a fair price for the coffee table and chairs. The furniture we have in the dorm is hideous, anyway. Bonnie and I were going to shop for something but got sidetracked with school.”

I hop up to sit on a nearby worktable, swinging my legs beneath me. I know I should go, but I enjoy this guy’s company far too much.

It’s becoming a real problem.

Cooper’s still watching me, his expression indecipherable. His gaze jerks away from mine when he gets a text. He pulls out his phone, and whatever he reads makes him laugh to himself.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing. My friend Steph just sent a funny post to our group chat. Here, look.” He joins me on the table. It takes absolutely no effort for him to haul his big body up and plant his butt beside me.

I lean toward him to look at his phone, trying valiantly not to notice how good he smells. A combination of spice, sawdust, and the ocean—which isn’t a scent that springs to mind when you think of aphrodisiacs and pheromones, and yet it makes me light-headed and tingly.

Oddly enough, his open chat thread shows a screenshot of none other than my website. This particular post is from GirlfriendFails, an anecdote about a girl who goes home with a guy late one night after meeting at a bar. They sleep together, but after he’s fallen asleep, she realizes she’s started her period and doesn’t have a tampon or pad. So she goes rummaging through his apartment to see if there are any in one of the bathrooms. The first bathroom is devoid of menstrual products, so she has no choice but to creep into the second bedroom and sneak into the en suite bathroom. She finds a box of tampons under the sink just as someone walks in on her. It’s the guy’s mom, wielding a lamp as a weapon because she thinks she’s being robbed. She’s screaming like a banshee, demanding to know why this nearly naked girl in a T-shirt and underwear is rifling through her bathroom at four in the morning.

“Can you even imagine?” Cooper grins. “Kinda makes me glad my mom isn’t around.”

I should probably tell him that I’m the brains behind the site he’s laughing over. But I don’t have the heart to say, Yeah, I own this website. Launched it and made my first million while I was still in high school. But tell me more about your struggling furniture business. What a jerk that would make me.