Read My Lips(58)

Kellen shows me the screen of his phone, asking me where the office is because he wants to check in with “Ol’ Marvin” before he goes. I nod and tell him to follow me, pocketing my phone and swallowing a growl along with all my frustrated thoughts of Dessie.

I lead him to the office doors. After we exchange numbers, Kellen thanks me with a handshake, which I take to be my permission to go before he slips into the office. I check my phone one last time, then shove it away after finding the screen irritatingly blank.

When I look up to push open the glass doors of the lobby, Dessie is making her way in.

We stop, frozen by one another’s presence.

“Hi,” I greet her first, my eyes wide.

She’s beautiful today. Her hair falls in waves and tangles of brown, and she’s in a green sundress with yellow flowers along the bottom rim of it, which is about the most colorful thing I’ve seen her wear yet. I’m already imagining how smooth her legs would be if I ran my hands up them, sliding that dress up with it and discovering the color of her panties. Maybe if I ask nicely enough, she won’t wear any at all.

She gives me a little wave of her hand—Hi. Her eyes, light brown and shimmering, seem guarded. It cuts me deep that I don’t know what she’s thinking, if she’s already over me, just tolerating me, or still gives half a shit about what went on between us Saturday. I almost devoured her. I was so close. She wanted it too. We craved each other’s taste all night; I could tell in the magnetic way she drew toward me when I pulled away, or how every nerve in my body vibrated with electricity when her wicked finger traced my tattoo. I’d draw a roadmap of ink all over my body if it meant having her touch all over me.

“How’re you?” I ask her dumbly.

She gives me a shrug and a muted smile, then runs a hand through her hair, drawing some of it behind an ear. God, she looks so beautiful. She presses her lips together, and for some reason, that makes me think of how she squeezed her legs together when I touched her on my couch.

She still wants me, I decide, a stroke of confidence racing up my back, straightening it. “You wanna grab a bite?” I ask her, crossing my arms and leaning on the glass next to her, which brings me so close to Dessie that I can smell her hair.

“I have class,” she says demonstratively, then points at the hallway.

I bite the inside of my cheek, frustrated.

Then her hand finds my arm. I sink into her gorgeous eyes. Just the touch of her soft fingers on my forearm invigorates me to the core. I was a frozen-solid yeti in a realm of ice and endless cold, and she’s thawed me in seconds.

“Afterwards, maybe,” she adds.

“Afterwards,” I agree, my eyes lighting up.

The next second, Kellen has emerged from the hall and his face shimmers with surprise, his eyebrows lifting up high. He says something and Dessie turns around to face him, and the look on her face is, to say the very least, caught off-guard. She seems to sputter and her face turns three shades of pink. No smile finds her, despite her apparent attempt at being polite and shaking his hand, albeit stiffly. The two of them exchange words, none of which I understand.

I feel my pulse throb in my throat.

They know each other. Of course.

Kellen says something and Dessie looks uneasy, her beautiful hair dancing as she glances away. Kellen smiles self-assuredly, then puts a big hand on her shoulder and gives it a rub. The fuck is he touching her for? She smiles stiffly and seems to shrug away, then gives him a nod and says something else.

All this fucking talking. All this fucking touching.

All this fucking silence.

Kellen says his goodbye, then makes his way around her and gives me a wave, to which I respond with a cold, detached nod. The glass doors close behind him with a gentle thrum I feel through my body.

Dessie’s face is visibly darkened by that encounter. She looks up at me and I put on a smile right away, determined not to show the bitterness that’s sitting in my chest. I could give two fucks about Kellen, even if he’s all nice to me. His presence clearly didn’t improve Dessie’s day, and it’s led me down a path of possibility that I don’t want to entertain. Are they old flames? Did he have his hands all over her in New York? Is he some abusive asshole from her past? The possibilities burn across my synapses like wildfire.

I give a sideways nod at the glass, then lift my eyebrows. “So you know him?”

She bites her lip, looks to the left, to the right, and then she double-taps the thumb of a fist to her pretty pink lips—Secret.

I nod knowingly. I don’t even know what the hell’s between them and I already want to pummel Kellen until he’s bent in half. “Does he know it’s a secret?”