Chapter 7
DESI
Bang. Bang. Bang.
What the hell?
I must jump a foot off the ground. Thank God I’m not grooming a dog or else I’m sure there would be a very random strip of hair missing down its back. Or worse. A cut ear…
And then I slink behind the wall so I’m not in the line of sight of any of the windows.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
“Desi, it’s Rez. Open up.”
The sound of his voice has my panic morphing immediately from sheer terror to anger. I welcome the feel of my temper as it wipes out the exhaustion and panic, and I let it ignite as I stalk the few feet to the back door.
When I fling it open, Reznor is standing there with his arms folded over his chest, a baseball hat low on his forehead, and an irritated look on his face.
The sun is fading behind the hills at his back, bathing the valley of Sunnyville in a soft glow, and I hate—absolutely hate—that my stomach flutters at the sight of him.
I’m not a flutter girl. I’m a quick bang of lust between the thighs, it’s time to go to the bedroom type.
Flutters don’t happen.
But I fluttered.
Crap.
“What?” I snap at him, trying to combat my unwanted attraction to him, when every part of my body reacts to him. To the rough cut of his jaw. The deep brown of his eyes. The slight curve of his smile.
“Good evening to you too.” He chuckles.
“Ever heard of a front door?”
He looks at me for a beat before shaking his head. “Sorry. I thought that was the business entrance and this was the personal. I didn’t mean to—”
“Scare me? Yeah. You did.”
“Fine. Next time I’ll knock so you know it’s me.”
“That’s not what I mean—”
“Something like this,” he says with zero regard for me telling him that there won’t be a next time. He raps his knuckles on the side of the doorjamb: knock-knock. Knock-knock-knock.
His grin widens as he takes in the frustration on my face.
Yes, I’m being a bitch.
No, he doesn’t deserve it.
But he made me flutter.
And he’s him—looking all hot and sexy—and I’m me—a woman who has sworn off men for a while—and hell if the sight of him isn’t getting things in me revved that I don’t want him to hold the keys to.
“What? You don’t like that pattern?” He angles his head to the side. “I can make a different one.” He lifts his fist to knock.
“No, it’s fine. It’s just…” I blow out a sigh and hate that the shy smile on his lips looking like a little boy’s, mixed with the tattoos decorating his arm are like kryptonite wearing down my defenses. “That pattern is fine.”
“Good,” he says as if he doesn’t hear the annoyance lacing every syllable I speak.
Silence falls as we stare at each other for a beat as I figure out what to say and he waits for it.
“You didn’t show up to class tonight.”
Just when I thought I was starting to like him...
“I wasn’t aware you were keeping tabs.”
His eyes narrow as he looks closer than I want him to look before crossing his arms over his chest and leaning a shoulder on the doorjamb, forcing me to take a step back into the house to gain some distance.
“Why does the class scare you so much?” he asks.
“No one said it did.”
“No one had to say it...your actions speak for themselves.”
Once again he's caught me flat-footed—first with the damn flutters and now with wanting to know why I didn’t show up to class. And I hate that I feel like I want to tell him when I don’t talk about this with anyone other than Grant and Emerson.
But I don’t. I recover quickly.
“I had to stay home. A plumber was coming to look at what I think is a broken pipe.” He just looks at me, which prompts me to ramble further. “He didn’t show up though.”
He twists his lips as he judges whether to believe me or not.
“Is your water off?” he finally asks.
I nod, holding our gaze steady so he believes me, all the while feeling slightly let down that he’s not pushing me more on this. “The sprinkler line is, yes. The grass is still wet, so I don’t know...maybe it’s the mainline. Maybe it’s God knows what.”
“He didn’t show?”
“He’s coming. He’s running late. He’ll be here later.”
That’s the problem with lying to your neighbor—they can see people coming and going at your house and lies can easily be proven or disproven.
“Uh-huh.” He doesn’t believe me. Those brown eyes of his say it but he doesn’t speak the words. “Desi, what happened to you to—?”
“Why don’t you sleep at night?” The question is out of my mouth before I even think through explaining why I know that.
His subtle startle would probably go unnoticed by most, but I see it. I notice the slight hesitation that tells me there’s something there beneath the surface.
He smiles and shakes his head. “It seems like we both have something the other one wants to know about. How about that?” He lifts his brows in challenge and then takes a step back off the porch. “Later, Desi.”
And with that I watch him walk out of my yard.
In fact, I walk through the house to the front to watch him out the front window. He walks across his front yard over to his motorcycle in the driveway and fiddles with something on it.
I close my eyes briefly and fight the urge to walk outside and tell him about the man...
But why?
Is it because I see someone who possibly fights internal demons too? Or is it because last week, even though I’d felt like his crash dummy at class, I’d also felt extremely...safe?