The pulse in his throat beats against my arm, racing faster than it should. It settles my anxiety a little, knowing he’s just as affected by this as I am. So I let myself be honest and say, “This is nice.”
His eyes settle on me, warm, tender. “I think so too.”
“Maybe I should hire someone to carry me around all day.”
“That might look a little weird sinceI’msupposed to be your boyfriend.”
My lips lift in a smile, stomach swooping when his eyes dip to follow the movement. “You’d take the job?”
“If you want someone to carry you, Fin, just call me, and I’ll be here.” His hands tighten, hauling me almost unintentionally closer to his body, and I sink farther into him.
I sigh, and the breath makes the messy hairs beneath his ball cap billow. “I see now how you get all the women. You can be really charming when you want to be.”
“I don’t want all the women, Finley,” he says, climbing the last stair and setting me down on the stoop so I can fish out my key from my tiny shorts pocket.
My eyes fix on his, questioning. “Right, just theonewoman that you won’t tell me about.”
He holds my gaze for so long, his body tense, that I think he’s not going to respond. But he finally looks away, says, “You were really drunk that night. You shouldn’t trust your memory.”
Maybe he’s telling the truth. Everything is still a hazy, fuzzy mess, but I could have sworn I heard it. I let myself imagine, just for a second, that he’s been harboring some kind of inexplicable attraction to me for all these years like I have been with him.
“Maybe not,” I say, fitting my key into the lock. It opens, letting out a blast of cold air that feels good against my overheated skin.
My blisters scream as I take my first step, and I wince, breath hissing out between my teeth.
He sighs loudly, walking in behind me. “Were the boots worth it?”
“I looked pretty hot,” I say, limping toward the kitchen. “So yes.”
He follows closely behind, and when I stop at the medicine cabinet, he’s beside me. When I glance over at him, his gaze is heavy on me, trailing from my feet up to my face, and I get the sense that when my back was turned, he took a lazy perusal in the other direction. “I think I agree.”
Liquid heat pulses through my veins, making me hot despite the chilly AC. A deep flush works its way up my chest and into my cheeks, made worse by the way Grey follows it. Slowly, like he’s wishing his hands or tongue were tracing the same path.
Finally, his throat bobs in a swallow, and he tears his gaze away from my chest, fixing it on the open cabinet beside my head. He reaches around me, pulling out a box of pink bandages. This makes his lips twitch in a smile.
His hand pats the counter beside me. “Hop up. We need to clean these blisters before putting the Band Aids on.”
I know this, had planned on retreating to the bathroom to wash my dusty feet in the bathtub and clean everything with alcohol before bandaging it, but I follow his instructions instead, heart beating in my throat.
The counter is slightly too tall for me to easily hoist myself onto, and my breath stalls when Grey’s hands settle on my waist, fingers twitching as he lifts me. They linger there for a moment too long, on the sliver of space between my crop top and the waistband of my shorts. I feel that touch everywhere, even in all the places he’s not touching. All the places I wish he was.
Then he drops his hands, gathering the rest of the supplies he needs—damp paper towels and dry ones, the bottle of rubbing alcohol, and a chair. He drags it in front of me, sitting down and settling my feet in his lap.
I’m not breathing when he strips my sock off, lifts his eyes from the admittedly brutal blisters, and fixes me with a chastising stare. “Finley Blankenship.”
I roll my lips together to keep from laughing. “I couldn’t tell you. You would have been right.”
“Iwasright,” he says as he wipes the blisters with the damp paper towel before wetting one of the dry ones with the rubbing alcohol. “This is probably going to sting.”
A little hiss escapes from between his teeth, and he immediately removes the paper towel from my skin, eyes snagging on mine.
“You okay?” he asks, concern etched in every line of his face. He’s so attentive, attuned to my every movement or sound, and I realize, for the first time, that he’s like this with everyone. It’s part of why he’s so charming, why he’s so good with women. He reads people so easily, adjusts his approach according to whatever they need.
So even though it stings, I know he won’t hurt me. I won’t even have to tell him, because he will notice if he does. I nod. “It’s fine.”
He’s quiet as he finishes cleaning the blisters. There are six of them between my two feet, some already painfully popped, others close to it. Every movement he makes is gentle, almost reverent, but also efficient, reminding me that he’s trained in this.
When he finally finishes, he looks up at me, the pale blue of his eyes looking especially striking in the dimness of my apartment. I left the bathroom light on and a lamp in the kitchen, but the rest of the place is dark. I suddenly realize how truly alone we are, how close we’re sitting, how his hands are still wrapped around my ankles, thumbs moving back and forth in slow circles. Every pass of them against my skin makes me burn hotter, want settling heavily in all the untouched places.
