“Maybe.” I lick a path across her collarbone.
“Hmm…” Her hands cup my cheeks. She lifts my head and looks into my eyes as if she’s searching for some hidden secret. “Well then, you’re funny. Smart. Interesting.”
While I’m happy she thinks that, it isn’t what I need to hear from her. I’m beginning to regret challenging her. Because I can’t tell her what I need without exposing my underbelly. So I resort to the safety of quips. “Not beautiful?”
“You are.” Her grin turns cheeky. “But you know that already, don’t you?”
“Maybe.”
“You do.”
I nip the tip of her nose. “Not as important to guys as it is to girls, I’m afraid.”
“You’re probably right.” She snuggles closer, wrapping her arms around my neck, her hands playing with my hair again. I love the glint in her eyes. “Oh,” she says lightly. “There’s one other thing.”
“What?”
Her expression eases into something soft. “I like you just the way you are, Drew Baylor.”
Poleaxed. Again. My throat closes too tight to find my voice. I swallow convulsively.
“I like you just the way you are too, Anna Jones.” I’m crazy for you. I fucking adore you. “Go put your damn hair up,” I tell her instead. “And we’ll get you some coffee.”
SLINKING INTO MY apartment in the middle of the morning, I feel like an intruder. I don’t want to be here. I want Drew. Disconcerting, as I’m more needy than I’ve ever been in my life. About anything. Though I’m pretty sure Drew is just as needy. It took twenty minutes of making out in his car before he let me go with a sigh and a promise to meet me after practice.
Practice and team meetings are not a choice but an obligation. I honestly don’t know how Drew will manage, seeing as he barely slept. But his body is a machine—a gorgeous, perfect machine—and he knows how to operate it.
Despite his protests to wait for him at his house, which were varied and persuasive, I came home. It would be too strange waiting around in his house alone. Too much of an opportunity to think. And Lord knows I’m an expert at overthinking things.
So here I am, lips swollen, hair wild, holding tight to my keys to keep them from jangling, and tiptoeing past the living room on the way to my room. When the couch squeaks and a dark shape lifts from it, I do the sensible thing and shriek like a poked banshee.
The keys fly across the room, and Iris barely ducks in time to avoid them hitting her head.
“What the fuck, Anna?”
“Sorry.” I sag against the living room wall. “You scared the ever-loving shit out of me.”
“Must have been preoccupied, what with doing the walk of shame,” Iris grumps before bursting into tears.
“'Ris!” I drop my bag and hurry to the couch. Only then do I realize she’s a mess, her makeup smeared, her hair standing up on one end. Her clothes are rumpled and creased as if she slept in them. And judging by the dents in the couch cushions, she probably has. “What’s going on?”
“Henry,” she wails as I sit next to her. “He fucking… fucking…”
“What?” I grab her arm. If he hurt her…
“Cheated,” she gets out.
Expecting the worst, this actually fills me with relief, but my heart aches for Iris. I’m not the touchy-feely type, but Iris is. So I pull her into my arms, and she leans heavily against me.
“Oh, God, Anna, it was so embarrassing.” She sniffles and reaches for the half-empty box of tissues by her feet. There’s a snowstorm’s worth of used ones littering the floor. “I went over there to surprise him, you know?” Her dark, wet eyes blink up at me and all I can do is nod, not liking where this is going.
“His roommate lets me in, and I… and I…” She shudders. “I was wearing this slinky teddy…”
Hell.
“And waiting on his bed, when he…he… He fucking bursts into the room with his tongue down some slut’s throat!”