I closed my eyes and forced myself to be patient with her. Trisha had her issues, and trust was one of them.
“Because I’m crazy about you. Because your lips are the prettiest damn lips I’ve ever seen. Because you think you’re a burden to me when I just want to keep you close to me all the time. Because you are making me lose my mind. Because I don’t want to be your friend, Trisha. I want to be yours.”
Her mouth fell slightly open as her blue eyes stared up at me in surprise. How did she not already know all this? It wasn’t like I have been subtle.
“You’re . . . you’re crazy about me?” she asked.
I held back a laugh. “Yeah, and everyone seems to see it but you.”
She frowned and bit her bottom lip. I wanted to pull it out and suck on it. She looked away from me for a moment and I gave her time.
“What about Ginger’s bikini?” she asked, not looking at me.
This time I did laugh. “I could not give a rat’s ass about Ginger.”
Slowly Trisha looked back at me. “But the others. All of them. You can have a different girl every night. They line up to get your attention. Why me?”
I cupped her face in both my hands and took in the beautiful features she seemed to be blind to. Inside and out she was beautiful. “I can’t see anyone past you. I haven’t been able to for a long time. Hell, Trisha, you’ve been in my head, taunting me, since the first day I laid eyes on you.”
“Oh,” she said in a whisper.
“Yeah, oh,” I repeated.
Trisha
My heart was racing and my lips were still tingling when Rock led me into the cafeteria. He had kissed me. Like, a mind-blowing kind of kiss that made my knees weak. I had even gone light-headed for a moment.
Rock’s hand was holding onto mine as he walked us through the lunch line. When he picked up my tray, he looked at his table with his friends and then looked at my table where my friends sat. “Today I want you to myself. We can figure out where we are going to sit later. Right now I don’t want to share you.”
How had this changed so fast? Just this morning he was barely talking to me. Now he wanted me all to himself.
“Okay,” I said, still unsure how I was supposed to respond to that.
Rock led us to the far corner of the room where a table sat empty. I could feel the eyes of everyone following us. It was like pricks of heat on my skin. I wanted to run out of the room. I hated attention, and this was by far the most attention I had ever gotten.
When he set our trays down, he pulled his chair over to sit right up against mine. His thigh was brushing up against mine as we took our seats.
“Eat,” he said close to my ear when I didn’t make a move to touch my food.
“I can’t eat with everyone watching me,” I explained, afraid to confirm the fact that we had drawn attention.
“They are getting over it. Most of them aren’t looking anymore,” he replied with a smile in his voice.
I cut my eyes to look up at him, and he winked at me.
“Please eat for me,” he said, reaching up to cup my chin. His thumb brushed my bottom lip.
“Well, ain’t this sweet. Damn more interesting over here than the usual place,” Dewayne Falco said as he pulled out the chair across from us and sat down.
“Dewayne,” Rock growled at him, startling me.
“Trisha don’t care if I sit here. Do you, Trisha?” Dewayne said, turning his amused smile to me.
“Uh,” I started to say, when Preston Drake sat down beside me with an extra milk carton in his teeth. He dropped it in his hand and set it down, then flashed me a crooked grin.
“The party has moved. I missed the memo,” he drawled, then opened his milk and took a drink.
“I don’t think Rock wants us here,” Dewayne said as he took a drink of his soda. “Not that we give a shit.”