Chapter Nineteen
Millie
This is the most fun I’ve had in a really long time. I smile as I dunk yet another ball into the opposing team’s cup. The crowd cheers. Lennon looks about ready to blow a gasket, but Aiden takes it in stride and swaps the cup up, downing it in two seconds flat.
Who knew I would be so good at beer pong? Not me. I’m just as surprised as Rowan seems to be, if his slack jaw and wide eyes are any indication.
“You didn’t think I would be any good, did you?” I ask, playfully.
His jaw snaps closed, like he just realized it was hanging open in the first place. “No, no. It’s not that—” he trails off, like he doesn’t know how to finish his sentence.
I laugh at how uncomfortable he looks. “It’s okay, if you thought I wouldn’t be.”
“I might be a little surprised,” he finally admits and that makes me even happier. For some reason, I really like keeping him on his toes.
I smile as I pass the ball over to him because it’s his turn. “Show me what you got, handsome.” My cheeks immediately heat at the slip of my tongue. Handsome? Really?
I watch as his entire face lights up, his easy smirk turns into something else entirely, a smile that’s dangerous for the heart. “You think I’m handsome?”
I’m too stunned by that smile to answer him at first.
“It’s okay if you do, more than okay actually.”
“I wouldn’t want to inflate your ego or anything,” I sass.
“Oh, he definitely wants to be inflated. Begging for it, really,” he teases.
I shrug my shoulders, “You’re alright and all but you’re not really my type.”
I watch his eyes twinkle with mischief before he turns around to deflect the ball that Aiden just threw down the table with ease, like we weren’t just in the middle of a conversation, and his attention wasn’t solely focused on me.
How does he do that? So effortlessly.
I’m still in awe when he turns around and asks, “I’m not your type?”
“Nope.” I pop the p for extra measure.
“What’s your type then?”
“You know. Dark hair, dark eyes, likes— books…” Now it’s my turn to guard the cups from Lennon and from that look in her eyes, she isn’t going to take it easy on me.
I crouch down, like somehow being closer to the cups will make it easier for me.
But I’m no match for the spitfire at the other end of the table. She sinks her ball with ease.
“Want me to drink it for you?” he asks with more tenderness in his voice than I was expecting.
“No, I got it but thank you.” I pick up the cup and take the first sip. It takes considerable effort to keep from choking on the nasty beer in the cup. Rowan watches my face the entire time and from the looks of it he’s finding my sour face entertaining.
“So, you’re saying if I dye my hair, you’ll like me?” he asks, casually steering the conversation back to my embarrassing slip.
“That doesn’t fix your eyes,” I point out, then continue “You have a book fetish I don’t know about?” I arch one eyebrow in challenge.
“I love to read.” The left of top of his cheek twitching with the lie.
“No, you don’t.”
“Do too.”
“Do not.”
“I do!”
Now we sound like the couple across the table that are currently bickering about whose fault it is that they’re losing.
“What’s your favorite book then?” I ask to catch him red handed.
I watch as his lips open and close like a fish out of water.
“Huckleberry Finn?”
“Huckleberry Finn,” I repeat. “Don’t you mean the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn?”
“Yeah, that one.” His cheeks are starting to turn this rosy red, a look that I’m enjoying entirely too much.
“What’s your favorite part?”
“Alright fine. I don’t like to read," he begrudgingly admits and it’s the best thing ever to watch him squirm about being caught.
“That’s okay. You can’t be handsome and smart. It wouldn’t be fair.”
“So you do think I’m handsome.”
Dang it. I mentally slap my palm on my forehead.
Why do I keep bringing that up? “I don’t know what you’re talking about.
I have a ball to throw in a cup.” I lean over the table, almost provocatively, well as provocatively as I can manage with no experience in pushing my ass up in the air in order to distract a guy.
It seems my mission is fruitless when I hear him whisper just over my shoulder, “Don’t think you’re getting off that easy, Daredevil. We’ll discuss this in private.”
I shiver at how husky his voice sounds when he says the word private.
My toes curl and my core heats with all the implications that one word implies.
I pull my arm back and try to mimic my other shots but this time the ball falls short and fails to land in a cup.
Lennon jumps up and down in glee before lining up for her own shot.
I blame Rowan and his stupid husky voice and his too handsome for his own good face for distracting me. “You know that was your fault.”
He laughs good-naturedly. “My fault? How do you figure?”
“You distracted me,” I sass as I turn around and put my hands on my hips, staring him down.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He throws my own words back at me with a knowing smirk and a wink of his eye before pointing towards the table. I turn around, my eyes trained on my opponent as I try to mentally block out the towering six-foot one, hunk of a man behind me.
We have two cups left on the table, to their one. If I can block this shot and we make the next shot, we’ve won.
“Don’t let her get past you,” he says in encouragement before I feel a gentle slap on my rear end and my brain officially short circuits. Did he just slap my ass?
I barely deflect Lennon’s shot, helping us keep our narrow lead by some miracle because all I can think about is how good his hand felt on my ass.
He chuckles softly, probably at how dumbfounded I look. It's now my turn to look like a fish out of water, as he comes up next to me and takes the ball from my hand. My skin prickles at his touch. “Ready to finish them off?”
I simply nod, rendered utterly speechless by the handsome and sexy Rowan Pierce. I watch as he takes his shot, bouncing the ball once on the table before it dunks effortlessly into their remaining cup.
Before I know what’s happening, Rowan has swooped me up into his arms and is spinning me around in celebration, the crowd whooping and hollering right along with him.
My smile feels so big and wide that it feels like it might crack my cheeks from its sheer size.
His returning smile has my heart beating out of my chest.
I have the urge to lean down and kiss him.
His eyes are alight with excitement, his face so close and so freaking pretty.
Just as I start to lean in, Rowan drops me to my feet, the sudden change zaps me out of whatever fairytale ending I was trying to conjure in my mind, leaving me slightly dazed but definitely thankful.
What the hell was I thinking? Trying to kiss him in front of all of his friends? What do you have, a death wish, Millie? You want to die a slow and painfully embarrassing death?
I clear my throat and throw my hand up in the air for him to high five, like it’s the only sensible reaction to have after envisioning kissing him in front of all of these people. He tilts his head, confused, like he can’t make sense of my gesture before lifting his hand and high fiving me back.
“Wanna go outside?” he asks after fist bumping an obscene amount of people, but I guess a guy like Rowan Pierce has an obscene amount of friends.
Some fresh air should do me some good, hopefully it helps knock some much-needed sense into me. I don’t know what I was thinking but I do know that kissing Rowan is a very dangerous thought, one that I have no business having. “Sure.”
Rowan snags a couple of red solo cups, I’m assuming full of beer. Then he heads towards a set of doors at the back of the house. As soon as we cross the threshold the noise from the party drops several decibels. A change my ears are very thankful for.
I reach up and push my finger in my ear and wiggle it around, trying to get the ringing to stop.
“Your ears okay?” Rowan asks just as we reach a bench towards the back of the small yard. He takes a seat and I join him, burying myself in my warm coat we picked up before heading out here.
“I think so, just need them to pop so it’ll release the pressure.”
“Yeah, the music can be pretty intense. Sometimes I sneak earplugs in when it’s really bad. Have you tried yawning?”
I giggle because I can’t picture him walking around with earplugs at a college party. It feels kind of old man ‘ish’. “You do not.”
He smiles and leans back on the bench, spreading his legs wide enough to brush the side of mine. I don’t move, liking the feel of his thigh touching mine entirely too much.
“I promise, I do. It makes it so much more bearable and I can actually hear the next day.”
I giggle some more, “I’m having a hard time picturing that. Has anyone caught on?”
He shakes his head and chuckles, “That’s the best part. Nobody’s figured it out yet.”
“That’s epic. I should have thought of that.” I yawn just like he suggested and I get a little pop but not enough to relieve the pressure entirely.
“You aren’t cold?” I ask after just noticing Rowan doesn’t have a jacket on.
It’s not freezing cold tonight but there’s definitely a chill in the air that requires a coat and probably a hat, which I don’t have.
I reach my hand into my pocket and realize my gloves I shoved in it last time I wore it are still there.
I might not have a hat, but gloves are the next best thing.
I pull them out and shove my hands in them, instantly feeling warmer.
His chin juts up and he gives me the side eye. “I play hockey, remember?”
I snort, “So that means you’re immune to the cold?”
He looks affronted that I would even ask that question. “Of course.”
“Oh, my bad, I forgot your middle name is Yeti," I deadpan.
My little jab gains me a deep chuckle that I feel all the way down to my toes, that curl in my boots. Boy, do I like that sound.
“Damn, I wish my mom would have thought of that.”