“If I’ll share?” I asked. Because was this man real? Was he actually, really, truly real? I slid my gaze from the blue letters that read Holy Cronut to his knees. “Of course, I’ll share.” A pause. “You got the big box.”
“It was the biggest they sold.”
One of his hands came to rest against his left thigh, and I thought about the piece of tan skin I could see through the rips in his jeans. The urge to reach out and see how that felt under my fingers swarmed me.
“What do you say?” Strong-looking fingers tapped against his leg. As if he’d known I was focused on that exact spot and wanted to get my attention. “Should we have them now, or save them for later? Maybe after dinner?”
Something that sounded a lot like a complaining grunt left me.
“Now it is.” Lucas laughed, and that, his laughter, turned out to be reason enough to make me finally look up. At his face.
“My breakdown must have been of epic proportions,” I murmured, studying the way the corners of his eyes wrinkled with a smile. “Or maybe you’re terrified of me now and you’re just appeasing the ugly crying monster.”
“There’s nothing ugly about you.”
My lips parted, his words echoing in my ears.
As if he hadn’t just said something meant to stay with me forever, he threw the lid open, unveiling the six pastries inside. “Plus, I love being cried on every once in a while.” The box was pushed in my direction again. “It’s good for my skin.”
I shook my head lightly and fished out one sugary and cinnamony crispy piece of heaven. “Thank you, Lucas. You really didn’t have to do this.”
He grabbed one, too, and then cheered his Cronut against mine, as if there was something worth celebrating. “Friends don’t do stuff for friends expecting a thank-you, Rosie.”
Friends.
“Right.” I willed my lips upward and ended up giving him what I knew was the smallest smile in the history of smiles. He frowned, so I felt the need to distract him. “I guess we’ll have to find something to say instead of thank you then.”
His eyes danced with something I liked knowing I had put there. Even after that reminder of us being friends. “Like a code?” he asked. “Just for us?”
“Sure,” I said, loving the idea way more than he did. Far more than I should have. “Something like that.”
Lucas thought about it for a few moments, then waved his pastry-holding hand. “Cronut you. How about that?”
His smile was big, bright, all megawatt power on display.
And I looked at him as he sat there like this was nothing, like he wasn’t wonderful and he wasn’t making it very hard for me not to like him more and more, so much that I had to physically restrain myself from telling him that I believed he was the sweetest man I’d ever met. Sweeter than any pastry he could get me. “Cronut you, Lucas.”
And without another word, we dug in, equally delighted moans leaving our mouths. The contents of the box disappeared in record time. And by the time we’d both finished licking the tips of our fingers, I had successfully managed to forget about almost everything.
“So, Rosie,” Lucas said, pinning me with a look that should have warned me of what was to come. “Will you finally tell me about your writer’s block and this long line of assfaces you’ve dated?”
CHAPTER TEN
Rosie
“So you heard all of that, huh?”
I knew he had, and I glanced in embarrassment at the hair-thin space that separated our knees.
“I think the whole neighborhood did; you were having a very loud conversation with the window wide open.”
I covered my face with my hands. “Great.”
I felt what had to be his fingers gently wrap around my right wrist. A breath got stuck in my throat at the unexpected contact. He pulled softly, tingles spreading down my arm, and I… well, I couldn’t do anything but let him retrieve that one hand off my face.
I gave him a one-eyed appraisal.
“I’m going to be honest, Rosie.” He went for my other wrist, and when I resisted a little, the small smile that had been playing on his face widened, dazzling me enough to let him take that other hand down. Ugh, stupid, stupid beautiful smile. “I might have accidentally listened to a fair chunk of it from the street. But when I sprinted upstairs and stood outside the door to listen to the rest, I did so completely intentionally.”
“Okay,” I answered slowly, bringing my hands to my lap. “Thanks for your honesty.”