I scramble up and chase after her. Even if I didn’t have any hope that she cared or there was something there bordering on care, I’d still be hustling to catch up. I have to plead my case. What I did really wasn’t smart, and I’ll admit it was an asshole move. I have to make some kind of play at redemption here before I get completely shut out and shut down.
“Stop following me!” She’s making an effort to compose her face, but all her emotion is still boiling there. She gnaws at her bottom lip for a second, and I know that look. It’s the I’m thinking, and I’m about to hand you your own ass. Hold on. It’s coming look.
I laugh softly. “You still have it in you.”
“The only thing I have in me is a wish that you would stop fucking with my life and leave me alone. And oh, by the way…”
Yup. Here it comes.
“For those two stunts—the towel and the freaking me out, making me believe you were dying, and…and for that kiss—showers are now going up to double the price.”
I jokingly bow to her because I’m honored she didn’t cut me off from the showers, period. “That’s actually three,” I point out. “But I’ll make up for it because I have another proposition for you. I’m tired of eating out as it’s not very healthy. I was going to buy some groceries, but I don’t have a working fridge. Or a stove. So I’ll pay you another thousand dollars for the use of your fridge—just a small space—and your stove for half an hour every night.”
“God. Now that’s three grand. It’s an expensive game you’re playing, and I do freaking know it’s a game.”
Rea looks hot when she’s flushed. She’s both temperature-hot and steamed up, angry-style hot, which makes me temperature-hot and steamed up, crazy attracted—my dick wants to rip a fresh hole in my distressed jeans—kind of hot.
The kiss is still rocketing through my bloodstream and ball sack. Maybe it was a mistake. Now that I’ve had a taste, I want more. And more. And more. I’m supposed to be getting over her. Kind of. Didn’t I decide I need to convince her to move on with me, not without me? Either way, it was just a closed mouth kiss, about a two on a scale of one to raunchy, but it’s a reminder that I’ll never forget her. Rea has something no one else does. It’s also a reminder to my very sad, very lonely, slightly frosty heart that I’ve never stopped loving her, and I have no idea what I did wrong the first time around. I’ve spent years trying to figure it out so I could fix it, all while lying and telling myself I was just trying to fix myself.
“Good.” However, the word comes out not so good. It’s like Rea was just forced to eat the dirt I was digging up or something. “I’ll use the money to save for a down payment on a new house. Far, far away from you in a neighborhood where there are no other houses for sale. I won’t have to worry about selling this one because I’ll just rent it out and get the heck out of here.”
I know she’s not serious because I know Rea. She could never let me chase her away from her own home. She has far too much backbone for that.
“Thirty hundred dollars? You’re actually serious?”
“I’m serious.”
“Then you’re also crazy. Or just…just too rich. And silly. You’re trying to buy your way into my house, and you’re trying to buy my time. It’s not going to work, Kayden. You might as well give up now. It’s never going to happen. That kiss? That kiss was trash. Like, literally. You tasted like garbage because that’s what you are to me. A giant dump of a problem. It’s like finding out that your house was built on an old junkyard and digging up nasty scraps of rusty metal and old tin cans and fish bones every single day and having to deal with where to put it all.”
The sun is so intense overhead that I realize if I don’t get some water soon to combat the amount I’m sweating, I might pass out for real, but I just stand there, grinning.
“If you can order freaking trees and have them appear out of nowhere, then you can order a fridge and a stove and pay someone to get them working. You could…you could also get your own shower fixed,” Rea adds.
“Unfortunately, all the fridges and stoves are on backorder.”
“Mmm-hmm. In the whole city. The whole of Amarillo,” she snorts, shooting me a sarcastic glare.
“The whole of Texas, actually. It’s a thing—fridge and stove shortage. Also, there seems to be a nasty back up with the plumbers in this city. I did indeed call for one, but it seems they can’t fit me in until next month.”