alike. But it doesn’t mean anything.” He watched her closely. “Not to me, anyway.”
“But you noticed it when I first arrived?”
“Well…yeah.”
Oh God. He’d said it last night—that he’d wanted her the second he saw her. Before he knew who she was. Last night those words had meant everything; they’d felt serendipitous and fate-filled and lovely. But now with this new information, with this new lens, it made her feel used.
Now it was a reminder that she was, as always, a means to an end.
Curiosity swirled viciously in her mind. She wanted to know everything—why they broke up. Whether it was her who called it off or him. Whether he still missed her. Still loved her. Whether any of that had come into his head when he decided to kiss her. Was he comparing them while he touched her, putting traits in columns and ranking them?
He’s not an asshole, and you know that.
She sucked in a long breath, trying to quell the sick feeling in her gut. This was nothing more than her own issues latching onto something in order to convince her that she was a failure. It was hard to see herself as anything else, given that’s what she’d been told her whole life.
It wasn’t fair to pile that on Trent’s shoulders.
“Don’t you find it a bit…weird?” she asked.
He closed the album in his lap and scooted closer to her, shoving things out of the way to create a path. When his hand came to her arm, it was like all her worries suddenly had their volume turned down. “Can I be honest?”
“I’d prefer it if you were.”
“I noticed it and…yeah, it was a little weird at first. But here’s the thing I’ve learned: looks don’t count for much.” He brushed his thumb over the side of her jaw. “And while I like the way you look very much because you’re smokin’ hot, the thing I like most about you is the whole caterpillar versus butterfly thing.”
“Metamorphosis,” she breathed.
“Yeah.” He smiled. “People…just go about their lives, you know. But you think about things. You care about things. You’ve got so much good stuff inside you that…shit, how could I not be attracted to that? You want to change and be better and I think that’s beautiful.”
Was she being the caterpillar, though? Coming to Australia had been running away, avoidance. Getting entangled with Trent was a rebound. A distraction.
Last night didn’t feel like a distraction.
“I know you’ve got some shit to work through,” he said. “We all do. No one’s perfect. But a lot of people do blame the bad things in their lives on others instead of taking the bull by the horns. Hell, you could have walked right out of Liv’s place that day and left me to fix the carpet and the scrapbook. But you stayed.”
“I stayed and turned you into a glitter bomb.”
“I’m not saying your approach was great,” he added with a laugh. “But you’re trying, and that’s more than most people can say.”
“Thanks.” Cora’s insides were doing a battle—the warm, fuzzy feelings taking up arms against the hard-shelled insecurities and worries. There was something about Trent that drew her in, like he was a warm fire on a cold night.
But to what end? She’d be gone in less than three weeks, and he’d said himself that he didn’t want a relationship. That was a dead end if she’d ever seen one.
“Any doubts about whether I was trying to fix the past by being with you?” he asked with a pointed look.
“Maybe a little,” she admitted. “But that’s on me, not on you.”
“I wasn’t thinking about her.” He pulled her closer, touching his forehead to hers in a way that was so tender and sweet, and yet it jacked her pulse up as though he’d slipped a hand under her skirt. “Last night, it was only you. The day we kissed, it was only you. I’ve got Cora Cabot on the brain 24-7.”
“And I’ve got Trent Walters on the brain 24-7.” She tilted her face, kissing him hard and using her lips to coax him open. The kiss was deep, a little emotional. Passion-charged and white-hot. “It’s lucky there are no more hours in the day, because you’d be stealing those, too.”
He let out a dark and dirty laugh, his hand slipping behind her head and his fingers sliding into her hair. “Good. I want you thinking about me all day, thinking about all the things I want to do to you when I get