Hopeless(16)

“Yeah?”

He tosses me his bottle of water. I catch it and look down at the empty bottle, feeling guilty that I didn’t think to offer him a refill myself. I shake it in the air and nod, then jog up the steps and into the house. Karen is loading the dishwasher when I run into the kitchen. As soon as the front door closes behind me, I gasp for the air my lungs have been begging for.

“My God, Sky. You look like you’re about to pass out. Sit down.” She takes the bottle from my hands and forces me into a chair. I let her refill it while I breathe in through my nose and out my mouth. She turns around and hands it to me and I put the lid on it, then stand up and run it back outside to him.

“Thanks,” he says. I stand and watch as he presses those same full lips to the opening of the water bottle.

We’re practically kissing again.

I can’t distinguish between the affect my near five-mile run has had on me and the affect Holder is having on me. Both of them make me feel like I’m about to pass out from lack of oxygen. Holder closes the lid on his water bottle and his eyes roam over my body, pausing at my bare midriff for a beat too long before he reaches my eyes. “Do you run track?”

I cover my stomach with my left arm and clasp my hands at my waist. “No. I’m thinking about trying out, though.”

“You should. You’re barely out of breath and you just ran close to five miles,” he says. “Are you a senior?”

He has no idea how much effort it’s taking on my behalf not to fall onto the pavement and wheeze from lack of air. I’ve never ran this far in one shot before, and it’s taking everything I have to come across like it’s not a big deal. Apparently it’s working.

“Shouldn’t you already know if I’m a senior? You’re slacking on your stalking skills.”

When his dimples make a reappearance, I want to high-five myself.

“Well, you make it sort of difficult to stalk you,” he says. “I couldn’t even find you on Facebook.”

He just admitted to looking me up on Facebook. I met him less than two hours ago, so the fact that he went straight home and looked me up on Facebook is a little bit flattering. An involuntary smile breaks out on my face, and I want to punch this pathetic excuse for a girl that has taken over my normally indifferent self.

“I’m not on Facebook. I don’t have internet access,” I explain.

He cuts his eyes to me and smirks like he doesn’t believe a thing I’m saying. He pushes the hair back from his forehead. “What about your phone? You can’t get internet on your phone?”

“No phone. My mother isn’t a fan of modern technology. No TV, either.”

“Shit,” he laughs. “You’re serious? What do you do for fun?”

I smile back at him and shrug. “I run.”

Holder studies me again, dropping his attention briefly to my stomach. I’ll think twice from now on before I decide to wear a sports bra outside.

“Well in that case, you wouldn’t happen to know what time a certain someone gets up for her morning runs, would you?” He looks back up at me and I don’t see the person Six described to me in him at all. The only thing I see is a guy, flirting with a girl, with a semi-nervous, endearing gleam in his eye.

“I don’t know if you’d want to get up that early,” I say. The way he’s looking at me coupled with the Texas heat is suddenly causing my vision to blur, so I inhale a deep breath, wanting to appear anything but exhausted and flustered right now.

He tilts his head toward mine and narrows his eyes. “You have no idea how bad I want to get up that early.” He flashes me his dimple-laden grin, and I faint.

No…literally. I fainted.

And based on the ache in my shoulder and the dirt and gravel embedded in my cheek, it wasn’t a beautiful, graceful fall. I blacked out and smacked the pavement before he even had a chance to catch me. So unlike the heroes in the books.

I’m flat on the couch, presumably where he laid me after carrying me inside. Karen is standing over me with a glass of water and Holder is behind her, watching the aftermath of the most embarrassing moment of my life.

“Sky, drink some water,” Karen says, lifting the back of my neck, pressing me toward the cup. I take a sip, then lean back on the pillow and close my eyes, hoping more than anything that I black out again.

“I’ll get you a cold rag,” Karen says. I open my eyes, hoping Holder decided to sneak out once Karen left the room, but he’s still here. And he’s closer now. He kneels down on the floor beside me and reaches his hand to my hair, pulling out what I assume is either dirt or gravel.