Keep (Seaside Pictures 2)

Like ten.

Covering the entirety of his face.

Gout. Also another winner.

So really, there was no need for me to stutter.

“Why do you keep rubbing your eyes?” Zane asked getting dangerously close to my personal space. It was as if he wasn’t aware that human beings had boundaries, little comfortable safe zones that he was constantly poking with his nearness.

I scooted back against the couch and sighed. “My glasses were beyond repair from yesterday, so I’m wearing my old ones.”

“Those are yours?” He sounded amused.

“What? Yes. Why?”

“They look like something I’d find at a retirement home.”

I sighed.

“In a donation box,” he added.

“They’re tortoiseshell,” I said defensively. “Some might say they’re…vintage.”

Zane coughed out a laugh. “Some being one. You. They aren’t vintage, they’re hideous. I feel itchy just looking at them.”

I tried not to get offended. Tried and failed as I slumped a little further into the couch. Why did I get in the truck again? Oh, right, because my best friend hates me, and I have a cat to mourn. “The clock is ticking.”

“Why aren’t you in college?”

Sighing, I grabbed a pillow and covered my body protectively, I might be partially blind, but even I could see his bare chest just glistening in my direction. “My financial aid didn’t come through, so I have to wait until the spring.”

“That sucks.”

“Yup.”

“So you’re stuck here…with me.”

“Kidnapped, but yes.”

He leaned forward; I could feel the heat from his body. “Can’t kidnap the willing, Fallon.”

“You talk circles around me. Even if I had protested, you would have somehow convinced me the only way to save the earth would be to get in the truck.”

He released a throaty chuckle. “Gotta admit, I’ve never actually had to go that far. Girls usually just hop on without invitation.”

I hated that he was embarrassing me, making me turn red. Very funny, make fun of the stuttering girl with glasses who’s only sexual experience was her lab partner who now bats for the other team. I cringed.

“What’s that look?”

“What?”

“That one.” He touched my face with his fingers.

I flinched at the contact and retreated deeper against the sofa cushions, “You can’t just go around touching people and things.”

“Yes, I can.” He touched me again. “See? It’s really easy.”

“You’re exhausting.”

“I’ve been told worse.”

I shifted away from his massive presence, “You said you were desperate, so how is this conversation supposed to help?”

“It’s making me feel better.”

“Making fun of me is making you feel better?”

“When did I make fun of you?”

Sighing, I stared down at the fuzzy pillow. “Never mind. So this song, what does it need to be about?”

“What are all songs about?” He sounded bitter. “Love and shit.”

I tensed a bit at his grating tone. Having only spent a short time with him, it was alarming how I could tell by just one tiny inflection of his voice that he was upset. No…not upset, angry. “So maybe you should just focus on the love part.”

“Not the shit?” He gasped. “Really? Is that what girls want? And to think all this time I had it wrong.”

“Grandma always said that love was inexplicable, that it was the type of feeling you couldn’t express with mere words. Love transcends even the most beautiful of poems and words.”

Zane was quiet. Too quiet. Like I’d just bored him so much in the past ten seconds that he’d taken his own life or something quiet.

“Does she also say ‘life is like a box of chocolates’?”

Trying not to be offended, I stood. “Alright, I’m just going to go.”

A warm hand gripped my wrist. “But your time isn’t up.”

I jerked away. “I don’t even know you.” I stumbled away from him and meandered toward the door just as a few strings of music floated into the air, followed by the smoothest most jaw-dropping voice I’d ever heard in real life.

“When you can’t explain what makes you hurt—what makes you think you can explain what makes you burn? Because that’s how I feel when I look at you…”

I reached for the door, desperate to leave, because staying meant I would be vulnerable, and who was I kidding? He was a celebrity. I might as well be a puppy from the pound that he’d decided to adopt in order to make himself feel better.

Me helping him was about him.

Which seemed to be a trend.

“I watch you go…I want to follow, pride drives a man insane, like your touch or when I kiss you in the rain.”

A mental battle occurred in that moment. Did I embrace the fact that when I was eighty, I’d be able to tell all my cats about the moment that Zane “Saint” Andrews used me, the girl with the weird stutter and tortoiseshell glasses, as a muse? Or do I run, knowing that, his magnetism would only end up hurting me in the end?

My decision to leave should have been easy.

It wasn’t.

And when I heard footsteps behind me, I hung my head in irritation. Zane’s hands went to my shoulders as he very slowly turned me to face him.