Wild(10)

            I chafed my hands up and down my arms.

            Everyone thought they knew me so well. Resentment simmered beneath my skin. He didn’t know me. Who was he to pass judgment on me?

            Maybe I just needed more time to get used to the place. To find the thing that worked for me. Logan ushering me away wasn’t going to accomplish that.

            “You don’t have any say about where I can go.” I walked past him and out into the night. It would be too embarrassing to return upstairs now. Not after he dragged me out of there.

            “Hey,” he called after me. “No need to get all butt-hurt. I’m just trying to help a friend out—”

            I stopped and whirled around. “Are we friends, Logan? Pepper and your brother are dating. That’s all. There’s no other connection between us. I don’t know why you feel the need to act all big brother. You’re just . . .” I paused, grasping. “ . . . a kid.”

            The minute I said it, I wanted to take it back.

            He didn’t look like a kid. Or act like one. Especially now.

            He repositioned himself, spreading his legs a little wider, bracing his feet on the porch of the building. He didn’t look mad or offended. Worse. He looked amused. He actually smiled.

            And that grin was devastating. Seriously. No wonder he had such a reputation. Girls must throw themselves at him. His mouth was sexy as hell, too. His lips were well-defined and wide, the bottom fuller than the top. Oh, the things I bet he could do with those lips. . .

            I blinked at the totally wayward thought.

            “You think I’m just a kid, huh?” His deep voice rippled over me like warm wind.

            I nodded once.

            He stepped down from the porch, coming at me, stalking like some kind of predator. I backed up.

            He was just a kid. Just a . . . kid . . .

            Aw, hell. My gaze skimmed up and down six feet plus of sexy man. Who was I kidding? He was so totally not a kid.

            I tried to look down my nose at him the way I had seen my mother do countless times when squaring off with some mouthy delinquent. My sister and I called it her “principal look.” If she ever used it on us, we knew we were in trouble. But the effect was lost on him.

            Yeah, he stood taller than six feet, but it wasn’t that. Logan had an air about him. A confidence rare for anyone, much less an eighteen-year-old guy. He held himself like someone who knew who he was and his place in the world. And that annoyed me. Why was he so damn self-assured?

            “How old are you?” he asked, still smiling. A deceptive smile. Cunning almost.

            “Twenty. And you’re eighteen. Still in high school.” I flung that at him almost like an accusation.

            “For another couple weeks, yeah.” He nodded, absorbing this. “What month is your birthday?”

            “November.”

            “Okaaay,” he dragged the word out. “I’ll be nineteen in August. My mom held me back . . . didn’t want me to be the smallest kid in kindergarten.” It was hard to imagine him ever being the smallest kid, comparatively, at any point in his life. “So we’re twenty, twenty-one months apart, Georgia.” He arched an eyebrow at me, waiting for this to sink in. For me to realize we’re actually closer in age than I was willing to admit. That my calling him a kid was just . . . dumb.

            I shrugged one shoulder, for some reason unwilling to give him that. “Maybe this place isn’t for you. Don’t you have a curfew or something?”