“Don’t call me that, please,” I say, allowing myself a rare moment of honesty. “I don’t like it.”
I’m not looking at Will, but I can still feel his gaze. And then I can feel his fingers lightly clasp my elbow as if he were afraid I was about to drift off, and he needed to keep me there beside him. “Annie. I’m sorry.” His voice is low and genuine. “I didn’t mean it in a negative way.”
I force a smile and look up at him. “I know. No one ever does when they call me by those names. And I’ve heard them all: Saint Annie, Angel Annie, Goody-goody Annie. It’s never meant in a bad way, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel a negative connotation when they say it.” I shrug slightly like it’s no big deal, even though…I guess it is kind of a big deal to me. “It feels like they’re saying I don’t have as much substance as everyone else. That because I’m sweet, I don’t have as much to offer. I constantly feel underestimated, and I’m so tired of it.”
Will’s thumb glides tenderly against my skin. His voice drops until it’s intimately quiet. “I won’t do it again.”
I breathe out. How was that so easy? I’ve always had trouble telling people the truth of what I’m feeling when I know it’s going to be uncomfortable for them to hear—so I usually just keep it bottled up. But I want Will to know what’s actually happening beneath the surface. Maybe it’s just because I know there’s no real threat to a relationship that doesn’t exist in any permanent way with him?
“Thank you.” My eyes shift to Will’s mouth, and that’s when I realize we’re standing inappropriately close for two friends in a grocery store. I smile and pull away to continue my shopping.
Will trails behind me. “I can relate, though.”
This makes me laugh. “You can relate to being seen as too sweet?”
“Well, no. But to being underestimated.”
“How so?” I say, looking back at him and enjoying our joint shopping excursion way too much.
Will shrugs. “Usually people see the tattoos and the videos of me forcefully removing an aggressive fan from a situation, or that damn BuzzFeed article, and they think they know me. They assume I’m nothing but a fu—” he catches himself and grins before amending, “a player who probably didn’t finish high school.”
I can see that—not that I’ve ever thought that about him, but other people might. It’s evident by the way Harriet is now lurking around the store and popping her suspicious eyes through every peephole like she expects to find Will slipping merchandise into his pocket at any second. Or better yet, like he’s going to throw me over his shoulder and steal me—the sweet town golden girl—away into the night where he’d lay me down in a bed of wildflowers and make love to me until—
Oh wait, huh? That’s not what we were talking about.
I adjust my shopping basket onto my forearm and shift a box of crackers on the shelf, closing off Harriet’s view. “So what is the truth about the illusive Will Griffin then?”
“Really nothing special.” He walks to a new corner of the store and this time I trail behind him. “Grew up in a cave in Alaska. Was raised by a pack of wolves. You know? The standard.”
I groan. “Oh come on.”
He spins around at the end of the aisle with a smoldering grin. “Winters were cold, but I learned to get by after killing bears with my teeth and wearing their fur on my back.”
I shove him while laughing. “Terrible. Does PETA know about you?”
His face grows too serious to be genuine. “It’s really rude to laugh at someone’s childhood, Annie. Have a little compassion.”
My face hurts from smiling so much. “All right, Wolf Boy. If you’re not going to tell me the truth, I have to check out now.” But as I pass by Will, his hand shoots out and lightly catches mine. A hot zing shoots through my fingers all the way to the pit of my stomach. When I look at him, I’m afraid he can see in my eyes just how affected I am by his touch.
“I did finish high school, for the record. With a 4.0 GPA, and then I joined the Air Force afterward and served as a Security Forces specialist because I couldn’t stand the thought of going to college and continuing on with my miserable existence as an achievement-seeking perfectionist.”
“I see,” I whisper, trying to absorb all of that rapid-fire information coming at me. But my knees keep nearly buckling at the mental image of this man in uniform. How commanding he must have looked. How…is mouthwateringly delicious fair to say?