Losing Hope (Hopeless #2)(34)

“Oh, my God, you do? Those are all from you?”

“No!” she says defensively. “They’re from Six. She’s my best friend and she’s halfway around the world and she misses me. She wants me to not be sad, so she sends me nice texts every day. I think it’s sweet.”

“Oh, you do not,” I say. “You think it’s annoying and you probably don’t even read them.”

“She means well,” she says, folding her arms defensively across her chest.

“They’ll ruin you,” I tease. “Those texts will inflate your ego so much, you’ll explode.” I scroll through the settings on her phone and punch the number into my phone. There’s no way I’m leaving here without her number, and this is the perfect excuse to get it. “We need to rectify this situation before you start suffering from delusions of grandeur.” I give her back her phone and text her.

Your cookies suck ass. And you’re really not that pretty.

“Better?” I ask after she reads it. “Did the ego deflate enough?”

She laughs and places the phone facedown on the counter. “You know just the right things to say to a girl.” She walks into the living room and spins around to face me. “Want a tour of the house?”

I don’t hesitate. Of course I want a tour of her house. I follow her through the house and listen as she speaks. I pretend to be interested in everything she’s pointing out, but in reality I can only concentrate on the sound of her voice. She could talk to me all night and I’d never get tired of listening to her.

“My room,” she says, swinging open the door to her bedroom. “Feel free to look around, but being as though there aren’t any people eighteen or older here, stay off the bed. I’m not allowed to get pregnant this weekend.”

I pause as I’m passing through her door and eye her. “Only this weekend?” I ask, matching her wit. “You plan on getting knocked up next weekend, instead?”

She smiles and I continue making my way into her room. “Nah,” she says. “I’ll probably wait a few more weeks.”

I shouldn’t be here. Every minute I spend with her makes me like her more and more. Now I’m in her room and there’s no one in the house other than her and me, not to mention the fact that there’s this bed between us that she told me to stay off of.

I shouldn’t be here.

I came here to show her I’m the good guy, not the bad guy. So why am I looking at her bed and not having good thoughts right now?

“I’m eighteen,” I say, unable to stop imagining what she looks like when she lies in this bed.

“Yay for you?” she says, confused.

I smile at her, then nod toward her bed as explanation. “You said to stay off your bed because I’m not eighteen. I’m just pointing out that I am.”

Her shoulders tense and she inhales a quick breath. “Oh,” she says, slightly flustered. “Well then, I meant nineteen.”

I like her reaction a little too much, so I try to refocus and concentrate on why I’m here.

Why am I here? Because all that’s running through my mind right now is bed, bed, bed.

I’m here to make a point. A much-needed, valid point. I walk as far away from the bed as I can get and end up at the window.

The same window I’ve heard so much about over the course of the past week at school. It’s amazing the things you can learn if you just shut up and listen.

I lean my head out of it and look around, then pull back inside. I don’t like that she keeps it open. It’s not safe.

“So this is the infamous window, huh?”

If that comment doesn’t direct the conversation in the direction I’m hoping, I don’t know what will.

“What do you want, Holder?” she snaps.

I turn to face her and she’s eyeing me fiercely. “Did I say something wrong, Sky? Or untrue? Unfounded, maybe?”

She immediately walks to her door and holds it open. “You know exactly what you said and you got the reaction you wanted. Happy? You can go now.”

I hate that I’m pissing her off, but I ignore her request for me to leave. I look away and walk to the side of her bed and pick up a book. I pretend to flip through it while I contemplate how to start the conversation.

“Holder, I’m asking you as nicely as I’m going to ask you. Please leave.”

I set the book down and take a seat on her bed, despite the fact that she told me not to. She’s already pissed at me. What’s one more thing?

She stomps over to the bed and actually grabs my legs, attempting to physically pull me off the bed. She then reaches up and yanks on my wrists in an attempt to pull me up, but I pull her down to the bed and flip her onto her back, holding her arms to the mattress.

Now that I’ve got her good and riled up, it would be a good time to tell her what I came here to tell her. That I’m not that guy. That I wasn’t in juvi for a year. That I didn’t beat that kid up because he was g*y.

But here I am holding her down to the mattress and I have no idea how we even got to this point, but I’ll be damned if I can form a coherent thought. She’s not struggling to get out from under me at all and we’re both staring at each other like we’re daring the other one to be the first to make a move.