I had f**ked with her head, running off like I had. Most girls would have shown up at my door demanding attention. Blythe had just accepted my absence and gone on with her life. She didn’t demand anything of anyone. Girls who looked like her usually used their beauty as weapons. She didn’t make any sense. She acted like she deserved to be treated poorly.

“About that,” I said, knowing I needed to apologize. She didn’t lift her eyes to meet mine. “I’m sorry I ran out on you that night and that I haven’t been by to see you since. I had some shit going on in my head, and I was worried. . . . I just didn’t know. . . . Fuck.” I needed to just say it. Get it out there. “I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea about what we were doing. About why I was showing up with dinner and coming around so much. You’re not the . . .” I wasn’t going to say she wasn’t the kind of girl I f**ked because it sounded wrong. “I like being around you. You make me smile and I like that. I missed you these past two weeks and I would still like to be your friend. If you would consider me as a friend, that is,” I finished.

She lifted her eyes to meet mine, and the relieved look in them told me all I needed to know. She didn’t want more than a friendship with me anyway. I wasn’t going to hurt her. She knew she was too good for me. Even if she seemed completely in the dark about her beauty, she knew I wasn’t the kind of guy she deserved.

“I’d like that. I have fun with you too. And I missed you. I don’t expect anything other than friendship.”

The plate of pancakes I ordered was set down in front of me, and the same exact order was set down in front of Blythe. There was no way she could eat all that, but I figured what she didn’t finish I would.

“This looks really good,” she said, grinning, and then a giggle escaped her lips. “I can’t believe they have whipped cream on them. And peanut butter.”

I winked at her before picking up my fork and knife. “Sweetheart, if pancakes don’t have whipped cream and peanut butter on them, then they aren’t worth eating.”

She licked her lips, causing me to almost drop the damn forkful of gooey goodness into my lap. The fantasies I’d had about her tongue. Shit! I had to get a grip.

“I’ve never actually had pancakes,” she admitted.

This time I did drop my fork.

Chapter Nine

BLYTHE

Pastor Williams hadn’t called me in the month that I had been gone. It wasn’t that I expected him to, really, because we had never talked much, but then again he had been my guardian for my entire life. Did he not care if things were working out for me? Or was he just glad that I was gone? More than likely, it was the latter.

I only had one photo from my childhood, and it was one a teacher had taken of me with my classmates in the fourth grade. She gave each student a copy in a heart-shaped frame for Valentine’s Day. I was never given a phone with a camera, and things like Facebook were off-limits to me. If Mrs. Williams had ever seen me doing anything like that, I would have paid for it.

Looking around my apartment, I realized there was a coldness to it. I had nothing to show for my life. Nothing to remember it by. I wanted memories that I could cherish. There was no reason to be sad because of my past. What I needed to do was focus on my life now. I had friends now. I also had a phone with a camera, and a laptop.

When I walked in the door, I wanted there to be photos of people in my life that made me smile. I wanted to see moments I would always remember. If I didn’t want to be different, then I needed to learn how to live like a normal person. I had thought coming here, that hiding out in my apartment and writing, was all I wanted to do.

I knew now I had been wrong. I hadn’t known about the things in life: like how good a kiss felt or how nice it felt to be held by someone. I had never had someone tell me about themselves and listen to me talk in return. Having had a taste of both, I wasn’t willing to go back to being that girl who closed herself off from the world and everyone who might hurt her.

* * *

I was also pretty sure that Mrs. Williams had been wrong about me. People liked me here. No one cringed or whispered about me when they saw me coming. Oftentimes people would turn to look at me and smile. They didn’t see the ugly evil that Mrs. Williams had always claimed was inside me. I was almost convinced she had been lying. She hated me because of my mother, but I wasn’t a bad person. Good people liked me. No one treated me like I was a walking sin.

* * *

Just maybe I was worthy of love.

Krit had taken me to breakfast yesterday, and we had then gone for a longer ride on his motorcycle along the beach road. When we had gotten back, he had come inside and we had talked about my classes. He had read me the lyrics of a song he was writing and asked me what I thought. It was late afternoon before he left to get a nap before his performance that night.

Linc had called later that evening to ask if I wanted to see a movie. The idea of getting to be close to someone again and feeling connected had sounded wonderful, so I had of course told him yes. Both Linc and Krit had been around me enough to know if there was evil in me. They would have seen it by now and been disgusted by it. Both of them seemed to genuinely like me.

A knock on the door brought me out of my thoughts, and I looked up from my computer screen, where I had intended to write some of my book. The door opened, and Krit stuck his head in. His eyes scanned the room until they found me, and then he smiled. The smile that always made me feel like warm honey was running through me.

“You really should lock this door,” he said as he stepped inside.

“Why? To keep out the riffraff?” I asked teasingly, then cocked an eyebrow at him.

He shrugged. “Well, you left it unlocked and look what happened.”

I nodded and gave him a serious frown. “I can see what you mean. Maybe I should get an extra bolt,” I replied.

Krit grabbed his heart. “Ouch,” he said, then fell back into the chair, facing me. “That was deep, love. Fucking sharp.”

I rolled my eyes and leaned back in my chair. “You’ll survive. I’m positive of it.”

Krit propped up both of his feet on the coffee table in front of him and studied me for a moment. “Come tonight and listen to the band. We’re at Live Bay again because of a scheduling change this week. You can sit with Trisha. You didn’t get to hear much the other night.”

This was where us being friends was going to be difficult. Telling him I had a date with Linc to see a movie shouldn’t be a big deal. But for some reason it was hard to say so out loud. I didn’t want him to think Linc was more important, though I had a feeling Linc wasn’t asking me out again because he wanted just to be my friend.

“You have plans already, don’t you?” he said before I could come up with something to say that wasn’t awkward.

“Linc asked me to go to the movies with him tonight,” I admitted. I had no reason to feel bad about this. No reason at all . . . but I did. Dang it.

Krit let out a sigh. “Fine. He asked first. It’s all good. But Thursday night I’ll be playing at Live Bay, and I want you to come.”

Okay. We could do this. He was making it easy, and I was making it harder than it had to be. “Deal,” I agreed.

Krit nodded, but he didn’t seem happy. “You eating on this date?” he asked.

Linc hadn’t said anything about dinner. He’d just invited me to a movie. I shook my head.

Krit pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Good. I’m starving. What time is he going to be here?”

“Six,” I replied.

“That leaves us with two hours,” he said, and a smile had replaced his frown. “Thai or Italian? Or do you want to get those fajitas from that Mexican place again?”

He was ordering us takeout. I didn’t want to feel that squishy feeling in my chest that made me feel tingly. At least not where Krit was concerned. But oddly enough, he was the only person who managed to trigger that feeling.

“Not that hard of a question, love,” he said, reminding me that I needed to answer him.

I had bad memories of Thai food. “The fajitas sound good.”

“That’s my girl,” he said as he dialed the number to the Mexican place. I knew he didn’t mean anything by it, but I had never been referred to as belonging to someone before. The simple my girl meant more to me than he realized. In fact, if he knew how deep that struck with me, he would run off again—and this time he’d possibly never come back.

I studied my screen like I was actually thinking about what to write next, but I listened to Krit order food. He acted like he belonged there in my place. Maybe that was supposed to freak me out, but it didn’t. It did the exact opposite.

When he hung up, I had gathered enough courage so I could turn to him and blurt it out before I realized how stupid I sounded.

“Can I take a picture of us on my phone? I don’t have a picture of us . . . and I’d like one.”

Krit glanced around the room, as if noticing for the first time that I didn’t have a picture of me with anyone, and then his eyes came back to me. “Only if you text it to me so I’ll have it too.”

Smiling in relief at him not laughing at me or running off again, I stood up and walked over to him. Before I could figure out how to take the photo exactly, Krit grabbed my hand and tugged me down onto his lap. “I’ll take it and send it to you,” he said, then pressed a kiss to my cheek and snapped a photo with his phone. Laughing, I pulled away to tell him I wanted one where I could see his face, but he grabbed my head and pressed my face to his cheek like I was kissing him and took another photo.

When he let go of my head, I saw the wicked gleam in his eyes and laughed harder. “Look at the camera, love,” he said before sticking his tongue out and licking the side of my face.

Shoving him off me and wiping my face with the palm of my hand, I couldn’t even pretend to be grossed out. It was the first up-close view I had had of his tongue piercing, and I was a little more than fascinated.

“Most women beg me to lick them, and I give it to you for free and you push me away,” he said with a fake pout on his face.

“You’re crazy.” I giggled.

“I’m the good kind of crazy, though.”

I wasn’t going to argue with him about that. He was definitely the good kind of a lot of things.

“There, I sent you all three of them. And I’m posting one on Jackdown’s Instagram because I’m so f**king photogenic.”

I wouldn’t disagree with that. “Hmmm” was the best I could do in response. Telling him he was anything less than beautiful was a lie. I needed to get up and off of him. I started to move, when his hand clamped down on my leg. “Hey. I didn’t say you could get up yet,” he said as he messed with his phone. One hand stayed on me as if that was all it took to keep me here.

When he was finished posting the picture, he looked up at me. “What’s your Instagram?”

“I don’t have one.”

His pierced eyebrow shot up. “Everyone has Instagram. Why the hell don’t you? Face like yours needs to be shared daily.”

How was it that he could say the sweetest things one minute and the dirtiest things the next? I shrugged and hoped I wasn’t blushing. “Don’t really do social media. Never have.”

Krit didn’t push me to say more, although I could see he wanted to. It was like he knew my boundaries and didn’t cross them. One day, if I was ready to talk about my past, he was the only person I could imagine talking about it to. But not right now. I wasn’t there yet.

“Want to see a picture of me with long hair?” he asked, changing the topic and moving his attention back to his phone. The amused look on his face when he found it made me want to take a picture of him. I loved how expressive he was.

“Look at this,” he said, tugging me closer so he could show me his phone instead of handing it to me. I tried not to think about being all cuddled up to him, and I focused on the picture.

His hair was the same color, but it brushed his shoulders. He looked like a surfer gone alternative. His face was younger too. “How long ago was this?”

“About three years, I guess. I hated it long, but the girls liked it,” he explained as if that was the answer for everything. The girls would like him without hair. Surely he knew that.

“I like it better now,” I told him, and moved back again. Being so close to him that his breath tickled my skin was too much.

A knock sounded on the door, and Krit pinched the inside of my thigh. “Food’s here,” he said before taking me by the waist and standing me up.

“Already?”

Krit shot me a crooked grin and shrugged. “The owner’s daughter and I know each other.”

Not surprising. I wouldn’t be requesting Mexican again. No! Wait. That was not the correct response. I shouldn’t have cared about what females Krit knew. He and I were friends. I wasn’t going to ruin our friendship for him or me.

“I’ll go get the plates,” I told him.

“You got sweet tea?” he called out after me.

I stopped and thought about lying to him. Telling him I ran out of stuff to make it. But I didn’t want to lie, and there was also a chance he might see the tea bags if he went through my cabinets.

“No, I don’t have any made,” I replied, then hurried into the kitchen.

KRIT

If she had just said no then I wouldn’t have noticed. But she’d stopped and frozen up on me for a minute. That was what gave her away. And I felt like a piece of shit. I was a piece of shit. Damn it. She loved sweet tea, and she’d been so proud of herself for making it right. And I had screwed that up for her by being an ass.