Ugly Love(34)
Author: Colleen Hoover

His confession makes me smile. “You have incredible patience.”

His right hand leaves my hip, and he brings it up to the side of my head, touching my hair as softly as possible. He begins to shake his head in slow disagreement. “If I had incredible patience, you wouldn’t be with me right now.”

I latch on to that sentence and immediately try to figure out the meaning behind it, but the second his lips touch mine, I’m no longer interested in the words that left his mouth. I’m only interested in his mouth and how it feels when it invades mine.

His kiss is slow and calm—the complete opposite of my pulse. His right hand moves to the back of my head, and his left hand slips around to my lower back. He explores my mouth patiently, as if he plans on keeping me behind this partition for the rest of the day.

I’m summoning every last bit of willpower I can find in order to keep myself from wrapping my arms and legs around him. I’m trying to find the patience he somehow shows, but it’s hard when his fingers and hands and lips can pull these kinds of physical reactions out of me.

The door to the back room opens, and the click of the saleswoman’s heels can be heard against the floor. He stops kissing me, and my heart cries out. Luckily, the cry can only be felt, not heard.

Rather than pulling away to walk back to the counter, he brings both his hands to my face and holds me still while he looks at me in silence for several seconds. His thumbs brush lightly across my jaw, and he releases a soft breath. His brows furrow, and his eyes close. He presses his forehead to mine, still holding on to my face, and I can feel his internal struggle.

“Tate.”

He says my name so quietly I can feel his regret in the words he hasn’t even spoken yet. “I like …” He opens his eyes and looks at me. “I like kissing you, Tate.”

I don’t know why that sentence seemed hard for him to say, but his voice trailed off toward the end as though he was attempting to stop himself from finishing his words.

As soon as the sentence leaves his mouth, he releases me and quickly steps around the partition as if he’s trying to escape from his own confession.

I like kissing you, Tate.

Despite the regret I think he feels for saying them, I’m pretty sure I’ll be silently repeating those words for the rest of the day.

I spend a good ten minutes mindlessly browsing, running his compliment through my head over and over while I wait for him to finish his transaction. He’s handing over his credit card when I reach the counter.

“We’ll have these delivered within the hour,” the saleswoman says. She hands him back his credit card and begins to take the bags off the counter to place them behind her. He takes one of the bags from her when she begins to lift it. “I’ll take this one,” he says.

He turns and faces me. “Ready?”

We make our way outside, and it somehow feels as if it dropped twenty degrees since we were last out here. That may just be because he made things seem a lot warmer inside.

We reach the corner, and I begin to head back in the direction of the apartment complex, but I notice he’s stopped walking. I turn around, and he’s pulling something out of the bag he’s holding. He tears away a tag, and a blanket unfolds.

No, he didn’t.

He holds the blanket out to the old man still there bundled up on the sidewalk. The man looks up at him and takes the blanket. Neither of them says a word.

Miles walks to a nearby trash can and tosses the empty bag into it, then heads back toward me while staring down at the ground. He doesn’t even make eye contact with me when we both begin walking in the direction of the apartment complex.

I want to tell him thank you, but I don’t. If I tell him thank you, it would seem like I assume he did that for me.

I know he didn’t do it for me.

He did it for the man who was cold.

Miles asked me to go home as soon as we returned. He said he didn’t want me to see his apartment until he had everything decorated, which was good, because I had a lot of homework to catch up on anyway. I didn’t really have time carved out of my schedule to hang up curtains, so I appreciated that he didn’t expect my help.

He seemed a little bit excited about hanging up new curtains. As excited as Miles can seem, anyway.

It’s been several hours now. I have to be at work in less than three hours, and as soon as I begin to wonder if he’s even going to ask me to come back over, I receive a text from him.

Miles: Have you eaten yet?

Me: Yes.

I’m suddenly disappointed that I already ate dinner. But I got tired of waiting for him, and he never said anything about dinner plans.

Me: Corbin made meat loaf last night before he left. You want me to bring you a plate?

Miles: I’d love that. Starving. Come look now.

I make him a plate and wrap it in foil before heading across the hall. He’s opening the door before I even knock. He takes the plate out of my hands. “Wait here,” he says. He steps inside his apartment and returns seconds later without the plate. “Ready?”

I have no idea how I know he’s excited, because he’s not smiling. I can hear it in his voice, though. There’s a subtle change, and it makes me smile, knowing something as simple as hanging up some curtains makes him feel good. I don’t know why, but it seems as if there isn’t a lot in his life that makes him feel good, so I like that this does.

He opens the door all the way, and I take a few steps into the apartment. The curtains are up, and even though it’s a small change, it feels huge. Knowing he’s lived here for four years and he’s just now putting up curtains gives the whole apartment a different feel.

“You made a good choice,” I tell him, admiring how well the curtains match what little I know about his personality.

I look down at the rug, and he can see the confusion as it crosses my face.