Total pages in book: 36
Estimated words: 34995 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 175(@200wpm)___ 140(@250wpm)___ 117(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 34995 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 175(@200wpm)___ 140(@250wpm)___ 117(@300wpm)
courage summit it actually was.
I started to step back.
"Thirty-six."
I froze.
His fork paused mid-air. His eyes—dark and unreadable in a way that reminded me of deep water, of locked rooms, of things I couldn't name—lifted to mine.
And there it was. That thing about his face that had kept me counting for over a month.
He wasn't classically handsome.
Or no, that wasn't right. He was. But it was the kind of handsome that didn't sit still. One second he looked like he could be carved from marble, all clean angles and Italian severity, and the next there was something wicked playing at the corner of his mouth that made the marble crack, and what was underneath was worse. What was underneath was warm,
and warm was dangerous, because warm was the thing you reach for right before it burns you.
"Thirty-six days since you started staring at me."
He...counted?
I was about to convince myself that I had just imagined him saying those things until I heard Jolie choking somewhere in the background, and...well, that was it. I might as well die of embarrassment now.
My fingers tightened involuntarily around the coffee pot as my gaze met his. His expression was mocking and amused, but not cruelly so. And there was something in his eyes...
Something that almost made me wish I could be like Jolie just this once so I could unlock that expression in his eyes.
“And I know...you’ve been counting as well.”
I didn't know if it was the shock of his words or the impossibility of his gaze or the simple fact that my nervous system had officially abandoned me, but my fingers went slack, and the coffee pot slipped.
Time did the thing it does in moments like this, where everything goes slow and sharp, and I could see the pot falling, and I could see the dark liquid tipping, and I could see the catastrophic trajectory of hot coffee about to cascade across the table and his lap and probably my entire future at this café, and I thought, very clearly: Well, this is
it. Dying of embarrassment earlier was a false alarm. But this...this is really it. This is how I die. Not literally, but in every way that matters.
His hand catches the pot before it hits the table.
And his other hand catches my wrist.
Both at the same time. Like it's nothing. Like his reflexes exist in a different timezone than the rest of the world.
His grip is warm and sure, and his fingers wrap around my wrist the way you'd hold something you didn't want to break, and I can feel his pulse against mine, or maybe that's my pulse, or maybe it's both, and everything is very loud and very quiet at the same time.
He sets the coffee pot upright on the table without looking at it. He's looking at me, and for one endless, devastating second, I am not invisible.
Then he lets go.
Returns to his omelet. Picks up his fork. Cuts a precise bite. Chews.
As if nothing happened.
As if he didn't just catch a falling coffee pot and my entire composure in the same breath. As if my wrist isn't still burning where his fingers were. As if my heart isn't doing something structurally unsound in my chest.
I should say something. Thank you, or sorry, or please excuse me while I go have a quiet breakdown in the walk-in freezer.
But I can't speak, so I do what I do best.
I become invisible.
I take the coffee pot. I walk back to the counter. I don't trip, which feels like a minor miracle. Jolie takes one look at my face and opens her mouth, and I give her a look that says ‘do not’ with such force that she actually closes it again, which might be the first time in recorded history that Jolie Liang has chosen silence over commentary.
I busy myself with napkin dispensers that don't need refilling. I wipe down a counter that's already clean. I count the sugar packets in the caddy by the register (twenty-two, and one of them is a Splenda that someone put in the wrong section, and I fix it because I fix things,
that's what I do, I fix small things because the big things have never been mine to fix).
And I do not look at the corner booth.
I do not.
I absolutely, positively do not look at the corner booth, where the man who just shattered thirty-six days of carefully maintained distance is eating his omelet with the calm of someone who didn't just set a girl on fire with five words and the grip of his hand.
But I don't have to look to know he's smiling.
Not at me. At his plate.
Like I'm already the most amusing thing that's happened to him in thirty-six days.
Chapter Two
DID I ACTUALLY DROP the coffee pot?
In front of him?
In front of a man whose hands moved so fast I didn't even see it happen?