Chapter 10 Zander #2
I tilt my head to catch her eye as she continues to examine her room and see that her cheeks are lightly tinted with a blush.
How the hell can someone be so cute and deadly?
“No biggie. My room is a mess about eighty percent of the time, and I have no excuse,” I tell her with a shrug, hoping to make her feel better.
She seems to perk up a bit at that, and I can’t help but keep going, even if it is at my expense.
“Honestly, it would have been a mess all the time, but when it got really bad, Clair would just send Jasper in to clean it.” I watch as her anxiety over the room melts away, and she looks up at me with a smile.
That’s better.
“I may be shit at keeping my room clean, but I could at least explain anything that you're not understanding if that’d be helpful,” I offer, walking around the room and plopping down on the end of her bed.
“That would be great!” she says and jumps into action. In a matter of minutes, she has all the bags from today dumped on the bed and sorted into what type of clothes they are. Pants, dresses, shirts, jackets, shoes, shorts, and underwear are all laid out in piles.
“Okay, so I understand that, obviously, these will go in a drawer,” she says as she scoops up her underwear, bras, and socks and heads to the dresser by the door.
Pulling open the top drawer, she shoves them in before she’s all but running back to the bed to stand next to me, that beautiful smile on her lips, and I can’t look away.
Her hair is still dripping, and with her standing and me sitting, I get hit with a few drops as it settles around her.
The fresh scent of her shampoo hits me, and I can’t help but breathe it in.
When we first found her, she smelled like vanilla with earthy tones.
The earthy tones were more than likely a result of her time in the pit.
I thought the vanilla suited her well enough, but whatever she smells like now is heavenly. I don’t know if I’ve ever smelled it before, but I can almost guarantee that it’s some kind of fruit.
“What’s that smell?” I can’t stop the words from pouring out of my mouth. The need to know overwhelming me.
“Um, what smell?” Jade asks, looking around in confusion.
I chuckle and stand, snagging a piece of her hair and bringing it up to her face so she can smell it. She inhales the scent, and a slight blush colors her cheeks again.
A smile pulls at my lips as I watch her. I don’t understand how she is so easily flustered. She seems to be able to give up her body if it’s for the good of others, but she can’t seem to handle genuine attention.
Her blush makes her look even more adorable, and I know I’ll do everything I can to make her blush as often as I possibly can.
“Pomegranate.” Her voice comes out just a little higher in pitch than usual.
I would be lying if I said it didn’t affect me.
I don’t realize how close we stand until her head tilts up to look at me.
I’d leaned forward to bring her hair to her face, and now we’re less than a few inches away from one another.
“It was in the shower, and I thought it smelled nice.” Her voice is low, no more than a whisper, but with how close we are, I can feel each word she says as it rolls across my face.
Shit.
This is not what I meant when I said I needed a distraction.
Jade is exactly the distraction I would love to turn to, and usually, I wouldn’t hesitate. But given her past, I’m pretty sure making a move on her would make me even more of an asshole than I usually am. Not to mention, I’m sure Froggie might count that as failing in our mission.
“It smells amazing,” I tell her, dropping her hair and taking a step back. “It suits you much more than the vanilla did.” I turn away, looking back at the bed and the piles we still have to put away.
I expect her to jump back into handling the clothes, but after a minute of nothing, I turn back to her to see what’s up.
She’s still standing there, focusing on me instead of the clothes. Her face is set in a small pout.
Huh.
Maybe I made her uncomfortable.
“So, what should we handle next?” I ask her, which seems to pull her focus away from me, and just like that, we are back to the clothes.
We grab the pile of pants and jackets and bring them into the closet. Then, grabbing a hanger, I show her how to hang them. She watches me once before she grabs her own hanger and starts hanging things.
In no time at all, everything’s hung up.
I explained that shirts can be hung or folded, and seeing as her closet is huge, it’s really up to her and what she prefers.
We find out pretty quickly that I’m terrible at folding and even worse at teaching someone else to fold.
So, after trying three times, I toss the shirt away from me as it starts to piss me off.
Jade dissolves into a fit of giggles at my temper, and I’m caught off guard. Most people tend to steer clear when I get upset, but not her, and I find myself laughing as well. Her laughter is contagious, her happiness so genuine that I don’t think I could stay angry if I tried.
“Fuck folding these things. Let's just hang them up,” I tell her, and she nods while continuing to laugh at me. We return to the closet after collecting the rest of her shirts.
“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” I tell her, but shoot her a smile. We get those and the few dresses hung up in no time.
Next, we handle her shorts. Now, these are something I can fold, at least.
After I showed her that you only have to fold them in half, she handled them pretty quickly before going to find a home for them in the dresser. While she does that, I store her running shoes and a few pairs of boots in the closet under her hanging clothes.
Even with everything she has now, her closet is still a sad sight. I don’t even care for clothes much, and I easily have double what she does, and that's just here. Hell, at our house, I have way more. But it's better than what she started with, and while it still needs improvement, it’s something.
I take a good look at what she’s got and make a mental note to grab her more later. Maybe I can even take her to a few more stores. The mall is cool, but it doesn’t have every store. Given the variety she went with, I’m sure she could find things she likes just about anywhere.
I’m lost in thoughts of shopping, of all things, when Jade appears right in front of me, minorly startling me, though I don't show it.
Now I know how the guys feel with me always sneaking around. Jade is even smaller than I am, and I know what using size to your advantage can do for you.
Apparently, I’ve been in here long enough for her to finish with the shorts. She stands in front of me with a huge smile on her face before she turns to the clothes we hung up and runs her hand along them all.
I’ve never really cared if a girl was materialistic or not. I’ve been with all types of girls, but the ones who have to have all the clothes with all the big brands are usually the most stuck up in my experience.
Rick and Spencer hate those kinds of girls. Not that it stops us from fucking around with them. But they always tell me they just want us for our status or bank accounts. They’re probably right, but I never keep a girl long enough to worry about it.
I think they’re just worried I’ll catch feelings for one of them since I flirt so much, but flirting is just fun for me, just a part of my personality.
But watching Jade and how genuinely happy she is with this little bit makes me want to give her more just to keep this happy look on her face. She doesn’t seem happy with spending money or even the name on the tag; she is just excited to have things, something that is hers.
Shit, I could give it all to her, and that’s a scary thought.
As she walks among her clothes and back out to her room, my eyes fall to the back of her dress. Her wet hair has left a huge wet spot on the back of her dress, but that’s not what caught my eye. The zipper on the back is only halfway up.
I reach out and gently place my hand on her upper arm to stop her from walking away from me. She looks back at me over her shoulder but doesn’t pull away, even as her brows pinch in confusion.
“Your zipper is down. Is it broken?” I ask her, releasing her arm, although I really don’t want to.
“Oh no, at least I don’t think so. I just couldn’t reach it to get it up all the way, and you were knocking, so I was kind of in a rush and forgot about it,” she tells me with a shy smile. She pulls her hair to the side and reaches her hand back to show me where her hand falls as she reaches up.
“See.”
“Would you like me to?” I offer as I hold myself in place. The amount of restraint I need around her is insane. Never have I ever worried about making someone uncomfortable. Shit, I can’t remember the last time a girl didn’t want me all over her, so this is all new.
She lets her hand drop, and her hair falls to cover her back again before she continues back towards her room.
“No, my hair soaked the back, so I should probably change,” she tells me before she turns the corner and disappears, leaving me standing in the closet looking after her like an idiot.
I shake my head and start after her.
Stepping back into the room, something catches my foot, causing me to fall forward. I catch myself at the last possible second. My eyes quickly sweep the room to see if Jade saw, but what I find is enough to make my embarrassment disappear.
Jade stands at her dresser with her back to me as she rummages through the drawer. That alone is normal enough, if not for the fact that she’s standing there in nothing more than her bra and panties.
My eyes quickly go back down to the ground to find the dress she’d had on moments ago wrapped around my foot. When she said she should change, I didn’t think she meant right now, with me right here.
Was she trying to tell me to stay in the closet while she changed? I run back through what was said, but nothing I can remember makes me feel like she meant for me to stay.
Shit.