CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Dani
“I’m picking out a book for you this time, Collins.”
“Okay,” I agreed, because I was curious to see what he’d choose.
“But don’t even look toward romance,” he said, pulling me further into the store. “We’re going to history.”
“You’re not going to make me read nonction, are you?” I asked, thinking for the hundredth time since I’d shown up at the Rainforest Cafe that he looked insanely handsome.
Those glasses, that shirt—he was almost too pretty to look at.
“You’re going to Harvard next year—you can handle it.”
I kind of wished he hadn’t brought that up. I was still working my ass o because I refused to give up, but the not knowing weighed on me. I’d wanted to go there for so long that it felt like if I didn’t get in, I wouldn’t even know who I was anymore.
Which was weird, especially when I didn’t even know specificallywhat I wanted to study, but I’d made it my entire identity, so failure wasn’t an option.
“I didn’t say I can’t handle it,” I said. “I just like escapism.”
“But books about history are interesting enough that they often feel like
ction,” he said. “Come on.”
“Says you.”
“That’s right says me,” he said, tugging on my arm a little.
God.
When he used that teasing voice and literally pulled me around, it messed with my head.
Because most of the time, Alec was Zeus, the cocky smart-ass who spoke in sarcasm and kept me at a distance. He was the guy who’d ghosted me, the guy I
tolerated for the sake of our mutually benecial ruse.
But sometimes his hockey-god mask slipped a little, and I got a glimpse of someone who reminded me a lot of the boy I used to know.
And it gave me whiplash.
Who had I kissed? Was it Zeus the Untrustable, or Alec?
He led me over to the history section and proceeded to behave like a professor, familiar with nearly every topic on the shelves. He walked around, pulling out hardcovers and paperbacks like he spent every weekend shopping at Barnes & Noble, and it was a little tooattractive.
A hockey player with glasses and a big fat brain?
A girl could faint from that shit.
“I’m impressed, Barczewski,” I said, because I sowas.
“And you thought I was a stupid jock who can’t read,” he said.
“Yeah, now I just think you’re a stupid jock,” I teased.
“You do not, don’t lie, Collins,” he said with a wink.
A wink that did things to my stomach.
Knock it off!
“Do you know how badly I wanted to punch you in the face when you winked at me during my rst speech class?”
“What?” He coughed out a surprised laugh. “Seriously?”
“Yes,” I said, still a little outraged as I remembered. “After pretending you didn’t know me the day before and then walking around school like an obnoxious jerk, you had the gall to look down at me and wink. You’re lucky you didn’t get your face scratched o.”
“I was being charming,” he said, grinning unrepentantly.
“You were being a douche,” I corrected.
“Come on, let’s not ght, baby,” he teased, his voice deep and quiet as he grinned down at me.
“Baby?” I said with a laugh, my stomach ittery as he looked at me like I was someone he was allowed to call baby.
“Do you prefer honey?” he asked, lowering his voice even more. “What’s your favorite pet name, Goldilocks?”
What is happening? I thought as I scrambled to remember my actual name.
“How about we go with Collins,” I said, embarrassed by how out of breath I sounded.
His irty grin slipped away and he cleared his throat.
Gave a nod.
“Yeah, that’s perfect,” he said, his jaw exing before he gave another nod.
“Let’s take a bookstore picture, Collins, so we can get on with it.”
“Good idea,” I said, working hard to pull o a smile as I took out my phone to grab a sele. In an instant, things between us felt tense and awkward again, which was probably why I failed to notice the three steps behind us that led to the store’s coee shop.
I missed the step and stumbled, but Alec had quick reexes. His long arm shot out and he pulled me back, but when he did, he let out a loud noise like a groan, and then he stopped, holding his arm.
“What happened?”
He gave his head a little shake and said through clenched teeth, “Nothing.
Hang on. I’m ne.”
“You don’t look ne,” I said slowly. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” he bit o, obviously in a lot of pain. His left hand was clamped over his right shoulder like he was holding it in place.
“Is it your arm or your shoulder?” I asked, stepping closer as he stood there, clutching his arm with a grimace on his face.
“Fuck,” he said under his breath, then managed, “It’s my shoulder, and I’ll be ne in a second.”
His face was bright red, like the pain was killing him, and I noticed a couple of people in the coee shop looking at him.
I touched his good arm and gently moved him toward the hallway that led to a back area.
“What happened?” I asked as soon as we were out of foot trac.
“It’s nothing,” he said, but his jaw was clenched and it seemed like he was struggling to even form words. “I hurt my shoulder a few games ago, and sometimes if I raise my arm too high or in a bad direction, it messes with me.”
“What can I do?” I asked, because he was still growling out words instead of speaking. “Do you need some Motrin, or do you want me to go get some ice?”
“It’ll be better in a sec,” he said. “But thanks.”
“Is it, like, a muscle pull or a strain or something?” I remembered Grandpa Mick telling him to ice his shoulder—was this the same injury? “What’d the doctor say?”
“It just needs to heal—fuck me,” he ground out. “It’s going to be a little touchy for a few days.”
He could barely speak, so it seemed like more than “a little touchy” to me, which was saying something, because he’d always had a high tolerance for pain.
He’d giggled about his black eye, for God’s sake.
But right now he looked like he was suering, and I hated it.
“Is there something maybe we can get to help?” I asked, wanting to do something—anything—to make him look less… terrible. My stomach hurt as I watched him swallow hard. “My grandma used to use, like, Aspercreme on her arthritic knee.”
“Sometimes I use Icy Hot,” he said, and I could tell that it was starting to feel marginally better. He was speaking more and grunting less. “I don’t know if it actually helps or if it just convinces my brain it’s helping.”
“Okay, well, you stay here and I’m going to run down to the Walgreens by the food court.”
“The pain is in my shoulder,” he said, and he almost looked like he might
smile. “I can manage walking.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” he said, and then he did smile. “This isn’t new, so you don’t need to look so freaked out. I deal with this every day.”
“Oh my God, you do?” How awful. “How long has this been bugging you?”
“A few weeks,” he said. “It’s ne.”
“It’s notne,” I said, carefully grabbing his good arm, gently pulling him alongside me. I didn’t know what kind of an injury this was, but he shouldn’t be in this much pain. Something wasn’t right, and I was going to lose it if his face didn’t go back to looking… not like this. “Let’s go get you some Icy Hot, but a few weeks isn’t okay, Alec.”
What if it was serious? Could something be broken?
We didn’t say anything as we walked to the Walgreens, which thank God was close. We went right to the Icy Hot—he obviously knew where it was located within the store—and I pointed to another product. “Have you tried these?”
I read the back of the lidocaine patch and said, “Not only does it mess with the temperature to trick your brain like Icy Hot does, but it works on the nerve, so it might be better, actually.”
“Yeah, no,” he said, not even considering it.
“What do you mean, ‘no’? Why wouldn’t you try it? Do you like being in pain?”
“For fuck’s sake, Dani, just trust me on this.”
“But it doesn’t make sense,” I said, not wanting to be a nag but wanting him to feel better. “Why not do both? Put the patch on the worst part, then use Icy Hot around—”
“I can’t put on the patch, okay?” he snapped.
“Wait, what?”
“When it gets like this,” he explained quietly, “it’s all about the motion of my shoulder. I could go play hockey right now and it’d be tolerable, but lifting my arm to take o my shirt is going to destroy me. I can go at it from the other side when I put on Icy Hot, but I can’t put on a patch without taking o my shirt.”
Ohhhhh.I cleared my throat and said, “I’ll help you.”
He just raised an eyebrow, which made me roll my eyes and say, “I’ve already seen you in the locker room and managed to control myself, so I’ll be ne—let’s buy the patch.”
I was impressed by how casually I said it, because I was freaking out.
Seriously spiraling.
On the one hand, my stomach was in knots, because seeing him like this was just, like, too much. The way his jaw was hard and his Adam’s apple kept bobbing and his forehead was creased: He was in so much pain, and I needed to nd a way to x it. To help him.
But at the same time, at the very same freaking time, I was out here saying things like I’ll help youand oering to apply rst aid to his naked, muscular (and injured) shoulder when I was still losing my shit over the way he’d kissed me at the PNA.
Because he hadn’t given me a normal kiss.
I’d hadnormal kisses before, and whatever that’d been was the opposite of normal.
It’d been competitive and athletic and sexy and bossy and domineering, and it kind of pissed me o, in a way, because I’d loved every terrible, magical, holy shit
thing about it.
What the hell is wrong with me?
My eyes were on the oor as we went over to the checkout, but when I raised them, I could see that he was still in a lot of pain. His jaw was like stone and there was a red ush on his cheekbones.
Although compared to his reaction when he’d stopped me from falling on my ass, it was a big improvement.
As soon as we walked out of Walgreens, my heart started beating a little too
fast.
It’s just first aid—chill out.
I saw the vacant family room/lactation lounge across the hall, so even though we hadn’t discussed the whereof this scenario, I pushed him in that direction, then locked the door behind us when we got inside.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Collins,” he teased, but his eyes were serious. “I don’t know what you have in mind, but I am not interested in any—”
“You’re hilarious, shut up,” I said, pulling the box of patches and the tube of Icy Hot out of the Walgreens bag. The quiet of the tiny room seemed deafening as I said, “So, um, I think you should unbutton your shirt but don’t even try to take it o, okay? You don’t need to make your shoulder worse, so tell me when you’re done and I will just, like, lower the shirt enough to put on the patch.
Okay?”
His eyes moved over my face like he was having a lot of thoughts, and my breath was a little frozen in my chest as those dark brown eyes held me in place.
“Okay.”
He looked down at his shirt as he unbuttoned it, and I gnawed on my bottom lip and opened the patches, keeping my eyes on my hands as if completely unaware of the unbuttoning going on in front of me.
“Okay, I’m unbuttoned,” he said, making meswallow hard and clear my
throat.
What a thing to say.
“Good,” I said, my voice sounding a little… airyas I raised my eyes to the shirt hanging open in front of me, a long vertical strip of bare skin exposed.
“So, um, I’m going to lower your shirt,” I said, painfully aware of how close our faces were as I looked up at him. The air was charged, and it felt like the
room was too small.
And my face was too hot.
I said, “Tell me if I’m hurting you.”
His Adam’s apple was all I could see as it moved around a swallow. “You won’t.”
I reached up with both hands and grabbed the two sides of his shirt carefully, gingerly, lowering it around his shoulders. I tried hard not to touch him, but my breath got stuck in my chest when my ngertips grazed his skin.
He didn’t say a word, only took a deep and sharp inhale.
Is he cold? Or…?
My throat was so dry all of a sudden.
My carefulness was a failure because the shirt slid o his arms and immediately fell onto the oor.
Which meant he was completely shirtless and so close that our bodies were almost touching.
“Dammit,” I whispered, feeling so ustered that I was a little lightheaded.
“Just. Leave it.” His entire face looked hard, like he was so exed that his tight jaw might just shatter at any moment.
I nodded, swallowed, then nodded again, trying not to look at the ridiculously muscular chest in front of me, dear God.
“I want to make sure I get it in the right spot,” I said. “Tell me when I’m in the right area, okay?”
He swallowed again and his jawbone tightened. “Okay.”
He turned around, and for some reason I felt no less… unnervedlooking at his back. It was ridged and hard, like his skin was stretched tight over those lean muscles. I held the patch in my left hand and raised the ngers of my right hand
to his shoulder. I gently set my ngertips on his skin, my heart beating in my ears as my ngers slid over his shoulder blade.
“Right here?” I asked in what came out as a whisper.
“A little higher,” he said, and everything between us was somehow in slow motion all of a sudden. My ngers brushed his skin, slowly, and I swear I felt him shiver under my touch as I traced higher.
“Here?” I managed to croak.
“Yeah,” he said.
I peeled the backing o the patch and stuck it to his shoulder, using my palm in slow circles to gently press it to his skin.
“You’re ne,” he said in a gravelly voice. “You’re not going to hurt me.”
“Good,” I said, my voice more a breath than a sound as my palm smoothed over the patch. “Turn around so I can get the front with Icy Hot.”
He obeyed, his dark eyes full of questions as he looked down at me, but he didn’t say a word.
I placed the cream onto the right side of his collarbone, set down the tube, then lifted my ngers to his shoulder.
“Is this all right?” I asked, noticing my hands were shaking just the tiniest bit as I put them on his body. I had no idea what I was doing anymore, I only knew that I was under the inuence of somethingas I started rubbing the slippery lotion over his skin.
“Yeah, but you don’t have to do this,” he said, his jaw exing and unexing. It felt like something huge was hovering between us, something thick and heavy that stole the air from the room.
I didn’t know what it was, but breathing was suddenly dicult.
“I—I want to,” I managed, feeling like I couldn’t think when he looked at me like that. I wasn’t even sure my lips were moving when I said, “I don’t like when you’re in pain.”
He raised his left hand and cupped my cheek, his eyes impossible to read as those big ngers grazed my skin. I wasn’t sure how, but the moment felt more intimate than the kiss that hadn’t left my mind since last night.
His gaze locked with mine, both of us breathing harder as he leaned in, inching closer—
“Is someone in here?” The door handle jiggled as someone said through the crack, “Is this open?”
“Y-yes,” I yelled, looking up at Alec while jumping away from him, quickly wiping my ngers on my skirt, my heart about to explode in my chest. “I’ll be
out in one minute!” I yelled.
Oh God, oh God, oh God.
He was watching me, his expression unreadable, and I wished I knew what he’d been about to do. I bent down and quickly picked up his shirt, then helped him slide his arms into it before gathering my bags o the oor while he buttoned.
“Okay, we’re good,” he said, and when I turned around, he was all put together again.
But he was still looking at me in that way, the way that I couldn’t gure out.
What the hell just happened?
