“Excuse me?” she asked in surprise.
“What time do you want me to come back over tomorrow?” I repeated.
“You’re coming back?”
Our eyes met, and I nodded. “Yes, I like to follow through with things until the very end.”
The double meaning was not lost on her.
Chapter Five
~Mia~
Like clockwork, he showed up at my doorstep the very next day.
Then, the day after, he returned when I was done with my shift at the hospital.
He even came back the following night, holding a bag of takeout in one hand and a change of clothes in the other. This was the second day he’d arrived in a suit. It was further proof that the boy I’d left on the football field after graduation day had disappeared, replaced by a man I barely recognized.
This new Garrett was not the lighthearted boy I remembered. He was a little rough around the edges and a bit bossy, and he had a hardness to him that I didn’t recognize. It wasn’t what I was used to, but if I had to admit it to myself, it was sexy as hell. I had adored playful, carefree Garrett. He was always loving and gentle, and he’d dedicated himself to me completely. But grown-up Garrett was full of mystery and angst. I didn’t know what he would do from one minute to the next, and I hated myself for liking it.
He wasn’t for me, and I didn’t need to add complication to his life again. He was just doing me a favor with the floors, and I needed to keep my distance. If the past had proven anything, it was that he deserved someone a hell of a lot better than me.
“You brought food?” I asked as he breezed past me toward the kitchen.
“Well, you have absolutely nothing in your refrigerator, and I nearly starved to death last night, so I decided to take matters into my own hands. You know you’re a grown-up now, right? Food doesn’t grow on trees. You have to actually go to the store, pick it up, and prepare it.”
He was also incredibly sarcastic. That, unfortunately, wasn’t new.
“I know I am a grown-up, Garrett,” I huffed, crossing my arms over my chest.
His eyes immediately dropped, hungrily watching the way my br**sts strained against my tank top from the pressure of my arms. His emerald gaze traveled back up to meet my eyes, and I blushed like a teenager. I looked away to find plates for the Chinese food he’d brought over, but I could see him smirking out of the corner of my eye. He knew he’d gotten to me.
“You still wear that necklace.”
It was a statement, not a question. I’d wondered if he would say anything about it. I’d caught him staring at it on the first day he’d shown up to help. We had been hours into destroying my floors. Leaning against the wall, I’d tried to catch my breath, and I’d quenched my thirst with a glass of ice-cold water. When I had looked up, I’d seen the crowbar on the floor, and his eyes had been locked on my chest. I’d instantly heated, thinking he was blatantly checking me out, but then I’d realized the heat in his eyes was from anger, not passion. He’d seen the sterling silver key pendant with his birthstone in the center hanging from my neck. He’d given it to me for my sixteenth birthday, and I’d never taken it off since he’d placed it there.
“I’ve never taken it off.”
He just grunted and continued pulling out cartons of takeout. His eyes drifted up to mine briefly, and he held our stare as if he wanted to say something, but then he let it go. We loaded up our plates, sat down at my kitchen table, and silently ate our moo shu pork and fried rice.
“Why?” he asked, breaking the silence.
I stilled, unable to look up and meet his penetrating gaze. “I…I needed to keep a part of you with me.”
I looked up and our eyes held for a moment before he pushed away from the table, startling me.
“I’m not hungry anymore.”
I finished my dinner alone with my knees pulled into my chest, and then I pushed my plate away. I listened to him in the living room, tearing up the floor like a madman. I could hear boards flying and nails hitting the walls. The tears rimming my eyes threatened to spill over as he took his anger and hurt out on the floor. I finally rose from the table to clean up our plates and glasses.
What had I done to this man? Had I really thought this would be better? No answers, no closure had turned into just anger and lost hopes. I’d done this.
It was just another reason he deserved so much more.
After another few minutes, I heard his movements slow and return to a normal pace until he stopped altogether, and I heard him empty a bottle of water in a few chugs. The broom then began making slow, methodical sweeps across the room, and I figured it might be a safe time to enter.
All that double-time pace must have caused him to work up quite a sweat. When I came into my living room, I was faced with Garrett the God. Holy shit, that man should warn people before he takes his shirt off. There were a lot of new additions to the twenty-five-year-old Garrett, starting with a set of eight-pack abs and a chiseled chest that made me think dirty, dirty things. Garrett 2.0 also came with a few tattoos, which I usually wasn’t attracted to. But on him? Yum.
I realized about a half a second too late that I’d been caught in my oglefest, and I immediately turned away, trying to hide the blush spreading across my horrified face.
“Um…I can do the sweeping if you want to take a break,” I offered, still unable to turn toward him.
If I looked at him, I would be looking at all of him, and then we’d be back to where we were a few minutes earlier—me swimming in my own drool, thinking of all the various ways I could get him up to my bedroom and the many, many things I could do with him once we were there.
“All right,” he said, holding out the broom just inches from his glistening body.
The pads of my fingers grazed his stomach as I took the broom, and I was pretty sure I’d whimpered as that tiny part of my body came into contact with his. Up until that moment, I’d thought eight-packs were a myth, a legend told by magazine editors and sorority girls, but no, they were real. That eight-pack was no joke.
I felt his eyes on me as I finished sweeping up the mess he’d made, and then he quietly watched me as I bent down and picked up each and every nail that had been strewn around the room.
Sick of feeling like an animal in the zoo, I decided to end the silence. “I thought you worked, like, a billion hours a week? How have you managed to get so much time away from the office?”
He seemed a bit taken aback by my question, but he gave a hint of a smile. His eyes always crinkled in the corners when he smiled. It made him appear younger, more like the boy I remembered.