Calmly, Carefully, Completely(34)

“Nothing to forgive,” I say. She stares at me. “Forgiven,” I say instead. “I promise.”

She takes a deep breath. “Thanks.”

Are we going to discuss the elephant in the room? The reason why she was charging away from me in the first place. “I shouldn’t have made you feel like you had to get up and run away from me,” I admit. We could have avoided the whole punching-and-rolling-in-the-dirt fiasco if I’d just kept my mouth shut and not talked about my dick and how hard she made me. I get that little stirring in my lap just thinking about it. I groan beneath my breath.

“What?” she asks. “Are you hurting?”

Yep. I’m hurting. But not the way she thinks. “A little,” I admit. My wrist hurts.

“I like the way you like me,” she says. Her voice is so quiet that I can barely hear her.

“What?” I ask. I lean closer to her, but she leans away.

She grins and shakes her head. “I like the way you like me,” she says again, this time a little louder.

A smile tugs at the corners of my lips.

“You make me feel things,” she admits. Her face isn’t pale anymore. If anything, her cheeks are rosy.

“Right back at you,” I say.

“You can stop smirking now,” she says, but she’s laughing. This is good.

“You tell me you like me and you expect me to stop smirking?” I lay my good hand on my chest. “You have to be kidding me. I might have to do somersaults.”

“I don’t like men,” she says quietly.

“Oh.” I don’t get a lesbian vibe from her at all. Not a bit. But I’ve been wrong before. “You like women?”

She buries her face in her hands and lifts her head, laughing. “No!” she barks. “I don’t like women.” She does that little dance with her eyes again, looking everywhere but at me. “I like men. But you’re the only man I’ve liked for a long time.” She closes her eyes and flings her head back, groaning. “Being normal shouldn’t be this difficult!” she cries.

“Princess, you are anything but normal,” I say, laughter bubbling inside me.

She shrugs, looking a little chagrined. “I don’t know how to change.”

I laugh. “I wouldn’t change you for anything.”

Her eyes shoot to meet mine. There’s a vulnerability there, and I see something else. Hope? “I feel like I’ve known you for a really long time,” she says.

“Yep.” She likes me. She likes me lots. I’m suddenly more full of confidence than I have been in a long time. “If you tell me you want me to stay away from you while I’m camping in your backyard, you just say the word.” I wait a pause. She doesn’t say anything. “But if you don’t tell me to stay away from you, I’m going to keep trying to get to know you. And then when you get back to NYU, I’m going to take you out to dinner.”

Her brow furrows. “A date?”

“Yep.”

“You’re kind of cocky, aren’t you?” she asks.

“Yep.”

“Why were you in prison?” she blurts out.

This time it’s me who freezes. “I thought you knew about all that.”

She nods. “I knew you were there, but I don’t know why.”

“Do you care?”

She shrugs.

I mirror her actions. “What does that mean?”

“My dad was in prison,” she admits. “And not many people know that so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t spread it around.”