I Pucking Love You (The Copper Valley Thrusters #5) - Pippa Grant Page 0,40

I can reject him. I don’t get to kiss him.

I surrendered that privilege when I didn’t try to contact him either after the thing in the fridge.

And I’ve never regretted anything more than I regret not being able to leap at him and kiss him until we’re tearing each other’s clothes off and trying that naked carnal humping thing again.

Not because I’m especially horny—though I’m getting there—but because no one has ever defended me to myself quite the way he is right now.

And until this moment, I didn’t know anyone needed to.

“I—” I start, but he brushes past me with another irritated noise, grabs his duffel bag, and slams the door to the bathroom.

“Get ready for bed, Muffy.”

Bed.

Right.

Sleeping.

With Tyler next to me.

Nope. No way. Nuh-uh. I’m sleeping in the bathtub. I am not sleeping in the bed next to him. For starters, because I like to sleep in a T-shirt and panties, and I don’t trust myself to not touch his bare leg with my bare leg. Next, because I’ve never shared a bed with a man overnight at all.

Ever.

And finally, because I like him.

I like him.

But I don’t like anybody. Not like that.

And why don’t you? a voice that sounds very much like Tyler’s pissed-off growly voice demands in my head. Because you’ve been absorbing all the subliminal messages from your parents for years that only thin, quiet, successful people deserve love?

Dammit.

I’ve cried seven oceans already today. I ran into Dr. Richardson, and he recognized me, and I recognized him. Veda’s lonely and I want to help her, but I can’t because I know I’ll let her down the same way I’ve let so many other clients down. I took Tyler to a funeral without warning and he passed out.

Today is not a good day.

But there’s this little flower of light struggling to poke its head out of my heart, a warmth that I don’t understand or recognize, and I think it’s because Tyler Jaeger doesn’t see me as a size fourteen disaster who still lives with her mom, has a failing matchmaker business that’s only miraculously still hanging on, and who’s in very real danger of defaulting on the student loans that she’ll never pay off.

He sees me as a person worthy of being friends with.

Or at least worthy of help.

And he’s under absolutely no obligation to feel that way.

Nor is he anywhere near the top of the men I know whom I would’ve expected to volunteer to help me.

I swipe at the streams leaking out of my eyes and falling on my boobs and dive for my luggage. I should’ve hung up tomorrow’s dress when we first got here, but I didn’t, because I didn’t want to open my bag and show off all my underwear and Slimzies in front of him.

I yank out my usual overnight T-shirt, remember it has a giant Thrusters logo on it, and silently debate with myself if Tyler will think that me wearing his team’s gear is an indication that I’d be more interested in telling people I had sex with a hockey player than it was that I was into him as a person, or if I’m seriously overthinking this because I’ve been a Thrusters fan basically since birth, since I was born cousins with Kami, whose parents have been Thrusters fans forever too, and Tyler has nothing to do with it.

Then I re-think everything I’ve been thinking and understand why he asked if I have gills.

Fish have gills.

He knows I’ve been pulling a few shifts at Cod Pieces.

Was he making a joke and I took it way too personally?

The bathroom door opens, and I slam my luggage shut lest my Slimzies make Tyler turn into a cringing puddle of man-wimp. Body-shaping underwear can do that sometimes.

Or so I hear.

And then I see him.

He’s in a skin-tight T-shirt—the fancy kind that athletes wear—and gray sweatpants and bare feet, his hair mussed, his blue eyes weary but still alert, those tattoos peeking out from under his sleeve and traveling down to his forearm, and if my mouth knew how to form words, it has now forgotten.

He tosses his bag into the small closet alcove, glances at me gaping at him, and stands there, holding my gaze, like he’s asking me a question that I should know the answer to, except I’m not sure I’m reading the question right.

Someone knocks at the door.

He does one of those closed-eyed sighs like he knows who’s on the other side, but I fly past him