Block Shot (Hoops #2)(8)

“Um, I guess.” She bends her head and reaches to scoop up all that glorious hair back into whatever knot she had it imprisoned in before. I stop her, taking her wrist in my hand. I wait for her to look at me, to really, maybe for the first time all semester, see me.

“If you’re a good kisser,” I say softly, not releasing her eyes and leaning one last time on our professor, “convince me.”





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“Convince me.”

The challenge lands at my feet like a gauntlet. Jared and I consider each other, unblinking. Confidence and questions darken his eyes to blackest-blue. What is even happening right now? Did he . . . is he asking me to . . . does he want . . .

Nooooooo.

Guys like Jared Foster don’t proposition girls like me in laundromats. Don’t get me wrong, I think he likes me. A lot. We laugh every time we’re together. Our conversations are stimulating. No one challenges me more in a debate. He’s the smartest guy I know, but he also looks like a handsome ski instructor who traded in the slopes for an Ivy League campus.

As for how I feel . . . it’s more how I’ve been feeling for the last three years, ever since freshman orientation when Jared asked to borrow a pencil. That day his hair, now a sun-colored buzz, hung to the angled line of his jaw, the darker and brighter blond strands twisting into shampoo-commercial perfection. He was beautiful then, but he was barely out of high school. He’s filled out the last four years. His features have hardened, the sharp incline of bone at his cheeks rising under taut, tanned skin. I could barely concentrate during orientation because he was so close, and many a night here in the laundromat I’ve read the same page five times trying not to stare.

It was an added bonus when his brain proved to be as alluring as his face. And I’ve never laughed as much as I have studying with him this semester. Knowing he was out of my league, I’ve been forcibly content as just friends, and the possibility that he wants more, leaves me thoroughly thrilled and confused.

“I’m sorry,” I finally say, barely hearing my voice over the heartbeat pounding in my ears. “I don’t know what you mean.”

He tilts his head, the tuft of blond hair capturing the harsh fluorescent lights overhead. He quirks that wide mouth. Jared can say more with the corner of his mouth than most people do with a hundred words. Turned down, canted up, twisted. Humor, disdain, skepticism. Those lips say it all without uttering a sound, but I have no idea what they are saying now.

“I said convince me you’re a good kisser,” he speaks slowly, like I might have a processing disorder, which could be the case because . . . huh?

Dark blond brows elevate over a simmering stare while he waits.

“And how would I convince you?” I ask, my words coming out on thin air. The longer he looks at me like this, like I’m a meal and he hasn’t eaten, the breathier I sound.

He steps forward, eliminating the sanity-giving space between us. He’s so close I have to tip my head back to keep our eyes connected.

“You could kiss me,” he offers, so close now his breath feathers over my skin. Steamy, yet minty. So close the rumble of his deep voice reverberates in my own chest.

“You mean kiss you?” I ask. “Or like kiss you kiss you?”

He chuckles and lifts the hair off my shoulder, tucking a chunk of it behind my ear.

“I’m pretty sure the second one,” he says, piercing me with another heated glance. “Is that the one with tongue?”

My brain, temporarily atrophied though usually agile, reaches for the nearest excuse.

“I-I don’t kiss guys who have girlfriends.” I arrange my face into polite apology and hope to end this perplexing conversation.

“Ahhh.” He nods, his expression reflective. “I figured you’d say that.”

“Yeah, so, we should probably—”

“That’s why I don’t have a girlfriend anymore.”

The breath stalls in my throat. My heart pummels me from the inside out, rattling against the cage of my ribs.

“You mean Cindy?” I ask.

“Yeah, no more Cindy.”

“You wha-wha . . . huh?”

“You wha-wha . . .” he mocks me, his full lips spreading into a blinding grin. “You heard me. I don’t have a girlfriend anymore. Cindy and I broke up.”

“But I’m not your type,” I blurt.

“And yet I broke up with her so you,” he says, laying the tip of one long finger on my breastbone, “would kiss me.”

I glance from the finger resting between my breasts to the sculpted lines of Jared’s face. Does he feel my heartbeat tom tom-ing through my sweatshirt, hope and doubt trading thumps in my chest? I’ve imagined kissing him, not just how he would taste or how his lips would feel, but imagined him wanting it as much as I did. Imagined how it would feel to be wanted back. Now that he says he does, it seems too good to be true.

“I think I’m getting, um,” I say, licking my lips, “mixed signals.”

His eyes trace the slide of my tongue, making me selfconscious. I tuck my lips in, hiding them from the singeing heat of his glance.

“Really?” he asks with a husky chuckle. “You’re too smart to be confused by something so simple.”