The Destiny of Violet & Luke (The Coincidence, #3)(48)

I continue to gape at her. “So let me get this straight. Last night after you put me in the truck, you walked down the highway until some guy picked you up and gave you a ride here.”

Her eyes land on me. “Who said it was a guy?”

I scan her body over. So God damn sexy it’s ridiculous and her skin is so ridiculously soft… an image of me touching her in the truck pushes up in my head. Me lying on top of her. My hands all over her. Is it real or from a dream? “Am I wrong?”

She narrows her eyes, ready for a fight, but then puffs out a breath, surrendering. “Yeah, it was. So what? Nothing happened.” She thrums her fingers on the sides of her legs as she looks around the floor.

I get to my feet. “You should have just stayed in the truck. Do you know how dangerous hitchhiking is?”

“About as dangerous as starting a fight at a strip club when you’re by yourself.” She walks over to the box and picks it up, steadying it in her arms. “And you’re welcome for saving your ass.” She props the box on her hip and then looks at me like she’s waiting for me to say it.

“You shouldn’t have hitchhiked,” I say instead, and then snatch the box from her, gazing at her lips, recognition clicking in my head… kissing her, drowning in her taste.

At first she looks like she’s going to snatch the box back from me, her hands rising toward it, but then she drops them back to her side as I move out of her reach.

“And thanks for pretending that you were pregnant with my child and crying over bills,” I say and then the rest comes rushing back to me. I kissed her. In my truck. I felt her and tasted her because I needed to and wanted to. And she helped, not by kissing me but by checking my blood sugar. Shit. “And for helping me with, you know, the pills and stabbing my finger with the needle.” The last thank-you is harder to say.

The corners of her lips quirk as she folds her arms over her chest. “I’m surprised you remember what happened at all.” She pauses, like she’s waiting for me to say something about the kiss.

I back toward the door with the box in my hand. “I’m actually good at drunk remembering.” I wink at her, trying to play it off, because I can’t go there. I’ve never stuck around afterward and had to endure the awkwardness of the morning after. Granted, we didn’t have sex, but still I touched her breast and slid my fingers up her legs.

She offers me a small smile. “I’m sure you are.”

I feel this heat swell inside my chest at the sight of her smile and it feels both good and bad at the same time. I’ve never flirted with a girl like this before. I usually give them like an hour and use little effort, just enough to charm her, get laid, and leave. Building too much of a connection defeats the purpose of what I’m trying to accomplish with sex and that’s to control a few moments and forget all the moments I didn’t have control. Things have crossed that line between Violet and I, especially after last night. I can’t have sex with her without feeling bad afterward, which means it would be next to impossible to bail after I got what I needed from her. But the thing is I want to slip inside her so bad it’s seriously becoming hard to control.

“I have a question,” she says, grabbing a bag off the bed and draping the handle over her shoulder.

Her tone makes me wary. “Okay.”

“I thought,” she starts but then reconsiders. “I mean, I thought diabetics were supposed to give themselves shots.”

I get a little uneasy as we veer toward two subjects I hate. My diabetes and needles. “Yeah, it doesn’t do any good when there’s alcohol in my system.”

“But usually you use a needle.”

“Yeah.” My throat feels thick.

“Does it hurt?”

“Sometimes it does,” I say, sounding choked. “Depending on my mood.”

She observes me briefly then drops the subject.

“So where’s the box heading?” I ask, patting the bottom of the box.

She hugs her arms around herself as she glances over her shoulder at the window. “Outside, I guess.”

I nod, and then head out into the hall. She follows me, shutting the door behind her. As we walk to the elevator I try not to think about the fact that after I get done helping her, I’m going to have to go back to my own dorm and figure out what to do with my stuff—figure out where I’m going. When we get outside, I glance around the parking lot. There are hardly any cars left on campus.

“So which car am I putting the box in?”

She stops at the edge of the curb and bites her lips as she looks at the road to the side of us. “You can just set it down here.”

I lower the box onto the concrete, lost. “Is someone picking you up or something?”

“Or something,” she mutters and plops down on the box. She props her elbow on her knee and her hair falls to the side of her face, veiling her expression from me as she lets the handle of the bag slide off her slumped shoulder and to the ground. “Thanks. You can go now.”

I lean forward and try to catch her eye, but she won’t look at me, so I have no f*cking clue what she’s thinking. I want to know and that’s not a good thing because it gives her some control over me.

I begin to back up the sidewalk and force myself to walk away, go back to my Jack Daniel’s, and women who don’t interest me enough to pull me back to them. But right as I’m losing sight of her, I spot her lowering her head onto her arms, looking so defeated I know I can’t leave her like this.