Meet Me Halfway(8)

Holy balls.

It wasn’t difficult to be taller than my five-and-a-half-feet height, but this man towered over me. He had to have been at least six foot three, six foot four. And if that wasn’t enough, the breadth of his shoulders was practically double mine, and they sloped down to a trim waist.

He was wearing a pair of rugged jeans that showed off tree trunk thighs and a fitted, long-sleeve black Henley that left very little of his biceps to the imagination.

It took me a minute before I realized the set of full lips resting above his square jaw were moving. “I’m sorry, what?” I blinked a few times, pulling myself out of creeper status.

“I said my box being open doesn’t explain why you have my mail.” He raised one thick eyebrow like I was a porch pirate, and he was waiting for me to stutter my way through an extravagant lie.

“It was all over the ground? I was just trying to put it back for you. Here.” I held the stack out toward him. Maybe he’d take it as a peace offering and forgive me for both hugging his mail and the whole music incident.

“How would all of it have fallen out?”

I’d seriously never met anyone with such a low, masculine voice. I swore I could feel it wrapping around me as he spoke.

“Uh…I don’t know.” I bounced my arm up and down, “Can you take it?”

He stared at me for a moment before unfurling his muscular arms and grabbing the stack from me. He tucked it under one arm, tipping his head to the side and appraising me. His eyes roamed from my fuzzy feet, up along my pajama pants and too-large t-shirt. He narrowed his eyes, apparently disappointed in his findings.

I reined in a sigh. Sexy he was, friendly he was not. “Look, I wasn’t snooping through your mail. I happened to be outside and noticed it on the ground. I live next door to you, my name’s Madison.”

He nodded, whether because he believed me or was simply acknowledging he’d heard me, I had no idea. When he didn’t introduce himself in return, I stuck my hands in my pockets and rocked back on my heels. “All right, well…”

“Garrett,” he grunted, albeit reluctantly.

I offered a smile, “It’s nice to meet you, Garrett.”

His name had barely left my lips before he twisted back toward his porch. Well, alrighty then. I watched him go, not at all noticing his perfectly toned ass as he walked up his stairs and through his front door.

I honestly wasn’t sure what to do with myself. People like Kathy I was used to, but that? He’d just dismissed me like I’d handed him a pamphlet about my Lord and Savior rather than his own damn mail.

Shunned by two neighbors in one day. That might be a new record.

I made my way back into my house, ripping my ruined socks off the second I stepped through the doorway. I couldn’t hear the shower going, so Jamie was set to walk out any minute.

I grabbed a new pair from my dresser and opened up my planner, plotting my assignments for the night. Tonight wouldn’t be so bad, I might actually hit six hours of sleep for once.

I was heading back down the hall when the sound of my ringtone echoed from the kitchen. Assuming it was my mother calling to finish our conversation, I took my time walking over and picking it up.

Caller ID: Don’t Answer.

My fingers gripped the phone so tight my knuckles turned white and every muscle in my body locked. I stared at the two words I’d replaced his name with, no longer hearing the ringing. Why was he calling? What did he want?

I wasn’t sure how long I stood there staring at the phone screen, long after it’d gone to voicemail before Jamie’s voice yanked me out of my funk. “Mom?”

Shaking my head, I glanced up to see steam pouring out around him like a graveyard scene in an old horror film. “Sorry, bud, I zoned out. You ready to play?”

“You mean, am I ready to destroy you? Yep.”

“Bring it, short stack.”





Chapter Three





“All right, there’s Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deut—Deuter—”

“Deuteronomy?”

“Right, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, first and second Samuel…”

I clicked on my blinker, listening to Jamie rattle off the rest of the books, trying not to chuckle at his pronunciation of Ecclesiastes. He’d been stressed out all morning about a math test he had, so to distract him, I’d challenged him to see if he could remember all of books of the Old Testament in chronological order.

His school had made him learn them back when he was in kindergarten, and I was honestly impressed that he still knew them. Although, truth be told, I didn’t know them so if he messed up, I wouldn’t know.

“See, told you I knew ’em.”

I darted a look over my shoulder, “Yeah, yeah. You know, the amount of random information you have stored in your brain is honestly alarming.” I barely remembered the details on a court case an hour after reading it, and here he was remembering useless names he’d memorized years ago.

Jamie was a student at a private Christian academy a few minutes across town, but not because we attended the church. We weren’t not religious; we just weren’t devout either. I’d been raised Catholic my entire childhood, but I hadn’t set foot in a church since graduating high school. The only reason he was enrolled there was because it was the best school in the area, bar none.