“I’m sure there are. I am not one of them.”
Suddenly another lightning bolt, this one to his already invested dick. He wondered what it would take to get her to the point that she was one of them. What would it be like to have Helen take what she was owed? From him? What would it be like to be used by Helen?
Good, he imagined. All that earnestness and focus. The fucking honesty.
His brother was wondering what was wrong with him since the pandemic and this was it—he couldn’t take the bullshit anymore. He craved something real. Authentic.
He craved Helen.
He cleared his throat and looked away from her profile, trying to get a grip.
“I’ve got tons of napkins and receipts and even a notebook I used during the pandemic,” he told her. But he didn’t tell her that every word had been about her.
“We can have it?”
“You can have it.”
And then, like he’d willed it into happening, she smiled, breathtaking and sincere, and she put her hand over his. Her fingers kind of circling his wrist. Her skin against his. Her fingertips on the tender bits, on the inside, where his pulse beat so close to the surface.
In his past, as a young rock star, he’d had a taste of everything the world had heard about. Groupies and orgies and constant, endless one-night stands with adoring women who loved his music and sucked his dick, then vanished when it was over like it never really happened.
He’d tasted every bit of that low-hanging fruit until it was rotten in his hands. In his mouth.
But Helen…her touch on his skin. Her smile.
It wasn’t an invitation for him to lean forward, to press his mouth to hers. To taste her. He knew that, and he was leaning forward anyway.
She jerked her hand back, blinking at him.
“Helen,” he breathed. “I’m…
“I’ll go get our keys,” she said and got out of that truck fast.
“Nice one, Micah,” he said into the silence of her truck “Fucking nice one.”
Chapter Eleven
Helen
That was not what it looked like. I mean…there just wasn’t any way that was what it looked like.
Helen pressed the little buzzer at the front desk and waited for someone to come and give her the keys. She waited and she told herself she was exhausted, severely out of practice and completely delusional.
“There’s no way he was going to kiss me,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry?”
Right. Now she was talking to herself. She took a deep breath and smiled at the young man behind the desk who looked like the buzzer had woken him up from a nap.
She told him her name, got the keys and braced herself to go back out and face Micah again. He was out of the truck, leaning against the tailgate, his hat pulled down low.
Even if you couldn’t see his face, you knew there was something about him. Long legs. The boots. The aura. You’d take another look at him without even knowing who he was.
He looked like someone. And she was no one.
He wasn’t going to kiss you. You were being delusional.
Right. That was the only thing that made sense. So she committed to it fully. Took a deep breath and pulled down the edge of her denim coat. “Got the keys,” she said. “We’re on the second floor.”
“Great.”
“It’s weird going to a hotel without any luggage,” she said, making awkward small talk as they crossed the parking lot. It was awful to be so strained with a guy she’d literally bared her soul to. But that was her current superpower—making shit awkward.
The trees behind them were full of birds, and between their noise and the highway she was actually shouting her small talk.
The awkwardness was too much.
“I haven’t carried my own luggage into a hotel in years,” he said.
See, she thought. See how ridiculous it would be to think he was going to kiss you? He doesn’t even carry luggage.
At the side entrance, he held out his hand and she gave him the keys. Careful there was no accidental skin touching.
Oh, she realized. That’s…maybe he was going to kiss her because she’d basically reached over and held his hand. It was flimsy. But women probably did that sort of thing to him all the time. Maybe he thought she was going to kiss him. And was just responding in kind.
“All right,” he said, in front of their doors. Their rooms were across the hall from each other. “Here.” He handed her one key and she turned to open her door. “I’ll see you in a few hours,” he said.
“Wait!” The word blurted out of her mouth and she closed her eyes and swore at herself.
“Yeah?” he asked. She turned back to him, stunned all over again, by how…god, handsome wasn’t the right word. It wasn’t even close to the right word. How real he was. How…profoundly present he was. He took up the right amount of space for a man. The right amount of air, but still there seemed to be more weight to him. More…life. That was it. Even exhausted from a night spent in jail he just seemed more alive than other people.