Ugly Love: A Novel(38)

“Come here.” His fingers reach down and wrap around mine, and he begins to pull me behind him.

My pulse is being ridiculous. It’s sad, really.

They’re just fingers, Tate. Don’t let them affect you like this.

He continues walking until he reaches a wooden trifold screen, decorated with Asian writing on the outside. It’s the kind of screen people place in the corners of bedrooms. I never understood them. My mother has one, and I doubt she’s ever once stepped behind it to change clothes.

“What are you doing?” I ask him.

He turns and faces me, still holding on to my hand. He grins and steps behind the screen, pulling me with him so we’re both shielded from the rest of the store. I can’t help but laugh, because it feels like we’re in high school, hiding from the teacher.

His finger meets my lips. “Shh,” he whispers, smiling down at me while he stares at my mouth.

I immediately stop laughing but not because I don’t find this amusing anymore. I stop laughing because as soon as his finger is pressed against my lips, I forget how to laugh.

I forget everything.

Right now, the only thing I can focus on is his finger as it slides softly down my mouth and chin. His eyes follow the tip of his finger as it keeps moving, trailing gently down my throat, all the way to my chest, down, down, down to my stomach.

That one finger feels as if it’s touching me with the sensation of a thousand hands. My lungs and their inability to keep up are signs of that.

His eyes are still focused on his finger as it comes to a pause at the top of my jeans, right above the button. His finger isn’t even making contact with my skin, but you wouldn’t know that based on the rapid response of my pulse. His entire hand comes into play now as he lightly traces my stomach over the top of my shirt until his hand meets my waist. Both of his hands grip my hips and pull me forward, securing me against him.

His eyes close briefly, and when he opens them again, he’s no longer looking down. He’s looking straight at me.

“I’ve been wanting to kiss you since you walked through my front door today,” he says.

His confession makes me smile. “You have incredible patience.”

His right hand leaves my hip, and he brings it up to the side of my head, touching my hair as softly as possible. He begins to shake his head in slow disagreement. “If I had incredible patience, you wouldn’t be with me right now.”

I latch on to that sentence and immediately try to figure out the meaning behind it, but the second his lips touch mine, I’m no longer interested in the words that left his mouth. I’m only interested in his mouth and how it feels when it invades mine.

His kiss is slow and calm—the complete opposite of my pulse. His right hand moves to the back of my head, and his left hand slips around to my lower back. He explores my mouth patiently, as if he plans on keeping me behind this partition for the rest of the day.

I’m summoning every last bit of willpower I can find in order to keep myself from wrapping my arms and legs around him. I’m trying to find the patience he somehow shows, but it’s hard when his fingers and hands and lips can pull these kinds of physical reactions out of me.

The door to the back room opens, and the click of the saleswoman’s heels can be heard against the floor. He stops kissing me, and my heart cries out. Luckily, the cry can only be felt, not heard.

Rather than pulling away to walk back to the counter, he brings both his hands to my face and holds me still while he looks at me in silence for several seconds. His thumbs brush lightly across my jaw, and he releases a soft breath. His brows furrow, and his eyes close. He presses his forehead to mine, still holding on to my face, and I can feel his internal struggle.

“Tate.”

He says my name so quietly I can feel his regret in the words he hasn’t even spoken yet. “I like . . .” He opens his eyes and looks at me. “I like kissing you, Tate.”

I don’t know why that sentence seemed hard for him to say, but his voice trailed off toward the end as though he was attempting to stop himself from finishing his words.

As soon as the sentence leaves his mouth, he releases me and quickly steps around the partition as if he’s trying to escape from his own confession.

I like kissing you, Tate.

Despite the regret I think he feels for saying them, I’m pretty sure I’ll be silently repeating those words for the rest of the day.

I spend a good ten minutes mindlessly browsing, running his compliment through my head over and over while I wait for him to finish his transaction. He’s handing over his credit card when I reach the counter.

“We’ll have these delivered within the hour,” the saleswoman says. She hands him back his credit card and begins to take the bags off the counter to place them behind her. He takes one of the bags from her when she begins to lift it. “I’ll take this one,” he says.

He turns and faces me. “Ready?”

We make our way outside, and it somehow feels as if it dropped twenty degrees since we were last out here. That may just be because he made things seem a lot warmer inside.

We reach the corner, and I begin to head back in the direction of the apartment complex, but I notice he’s stopped walking. I turn around, and he’s pulling something out of the bag he’s holding. He tears away a tag, and a blanket unfolds.