Hopeless (Hopeless #1)(31)
As soon as I say it, he darts his head toward me at the same second I squeeze my eyes shut and throw my arm over my face. I can’t believe I just admitted, out loud, that I’m attracted to him. I could die right now and it wouldn’t be soon enough.
I feel the bed shift and he encompasses my wrist with his hand and removes my arm from over my eyes. I reluctantly open them and he’s propped up on his hand, smiling at me. “You’re attracted to me?”
“Oh, God,” I groan. “That’s the last thing you need for your ego.”
“That’s probably true,” he laughs. “Better hurry up and insult me before my ego gets as big as yours.”
“You need a hair cut,” I blurt out. “Really bad. It gets in your eyes and you squint and you’re constantly moving it out of the way like you’re Justin Bieber and it’s really distracting.”
He fingers his hair with his hand and frowns, then falls back onto the bed. “Man. That really hurt. It seems like you’ve thought that one out for a while.”
“Just since Monday,” I admit.
“You met me on Monday. So technically, you’ve been thinking about how much you hate my hair since the moment we met?”
“Not every moment.”
He’s quiet for a minute, then grins again. “I can’t believe you think I’m hot.”
“Shut up.”
“You probably faked passing out the other day, just so you could be carried in my hot, sweaty, manly arms.”
“Shut up.”
“I’ll bet you fantasize about me at night, right here in this bed.”
“Shut up, Holder.”
“You probably even…”
I reach over and clamp my hand over his mouth. “You’re way hotter when you aren’t speaking.”
When he finally shuts his mouth, I remove my hand and put it back behind my head. Again, we both go a while without speaking. He’s probably silently gloating in the fact that I admitted I’m attracted to him, while I’m silently cringing that he’s now privy to that knowledge.
“I’m bored,” he says.
“So go home.”
“I don’t want to. What do you do when you’re bored? You don’t have internet or TV. Do you just sit around all day and think about how hot I am?”
I roll my eyes. “I read,” I say. “A lot. Sometimes I bake. Sometimes I run.”
“Read, bake and run. And fantasize about me. What a riveting life you lead.”
“I like my life.”
“I sort of like it, too,” he says. He rolls over and grabs the book off of my nightstand. “Here, read this.”
I take the book out of his hands and open it to the marker on page two. It’s as far as I’ve gotten. “You want me to read it out loud? You’re that bored?”
“Pretty damn bored.”
“It’s a romance,” I warn.
“Like I said. Pretty damn bored. Read.”
I scoot my pillow up toward the headboard and make myself comfortable, then start reading.
This morning if you would have told me I’d be reading a romance novel to Dean Holder in my bed tonight, I’d tell you that you were crazy. But then again, I’m obviously not the best judge of crazy.
When I open my eyes, I immediately slide my hand to the other side of the bed, but it’s empty. I sit up and look around. My light is off and my covers are on. The book is closed on the nightstand, so I pick it up. There’s a bookmark almost three-quarters of the way through.
I read until I fell asleep? Oh, no, I fell asleep. I throw the covers off and walk to the kitchen, then flip on the light and look around in shock. The entire kitchen is clean and all the cookies and brownies are wrapped in saran wrap. I look down at my phone sitting on the counter and pick it up to find a new text message.
You fell asleep right when she was about to find out her mother’s secret. How dare you. I’ll be back tomorrow night so you can finish reading it to me. And by the way, you have really bad breath and you snore way too loud.
I laugh. I’m also grinning like an idiot, but luckily no one is here to witness it. I glance at the clock on the stove and it’s only just past two in the morning, so I go back to the bedroom and crawl into bed, hoping he really does show up tomorrow night. I don’t know how this hopeless boy weaseled his way into my life this week, but I know I’m definitely not ready for him to leave.
Saturday, September 1st, 2012 5:05 p.m.
I’ve learned an invaluable lesson about lust today. It causes double the work. I took two showers today, instead of just one. I changed clothes four times instead of the usual two. I’ve cleaned the house once (that’s one more than I usually clean it) and I’ve checked the time on the clock no less than a thousand times. I may have checked my phone for incoming texts just as many.
Unfortunately, he didn’t state in his text from last night what time he would be here, so by five o’clock I’m pretty much sitting and waiting. There isn’t much else to do, since I’ve already baked enough sweets for an entire year and I’ve ran no less than four miles today. I thought about cooking dinner for us, but I have no idea what time he’s coming over, so I wouldn’t know when to have it ready. I’m sitting on the couch, drumming my nails on the sofa, when I get a text from him.