Quit Bein' Ugly (The Southern Gentleman #3) - Lani Lynn Vale Page 0,64

where I could find something to hold over my nose.

The first thing I came to once I was inside were the paper towels.

I moaned as I covered my nose with a handful of towels, cursing the stupid machine when it only spit out a small square of paper at a time.

God.

Anybody. Anybody in the freakin’ world could’ve hit me in the nose with those condoms, and I would’ve been okay. Anybody but Ezra McDuff.

Shit.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

I panted into the paper and rested my head against the cool, white-tiled wall beside the dispenser.

Then I counted to one hundred, hoping that would help.

It didn’t.

But what it did do was give my nose enough time to stop bleeding.

I reached for my phone, thinking now would be a perfect time to call my best friend, Camryn, and tell her about my humiliation.

But…it wasn’t there.

I closed my eyes and realized what had happened.

When those condoms had hit me in the face, I’d dropped my phone to immediately raise my hands to my nose. And in doing so, had left my phone wherever it happened to be when my hand had discarded it.

Garnering the courage, I walked to the door and pushed.

When I opened the door, bloody paper towel still in my hand in case it started to bleed again, it was to find the best backside in Gun Barrel, Texas blocking the door.

“Uhhh,” I hesitated. “’Scuse me.”

Ezra turned around, saw my face, and blanched.

“Are you okay?”

He was looking at me like he’d never seen me before.

To be perfectly honest, he probably hadn’t.

I wasn’t exactly in Ezra McDuff’s social circle.

I was more like that quiet girl in the corner at a party, while Ezra was the town hero and star quarterback all rolled into one.

The sad thing was, we worked at the same damn place. We probably passed each other in the halls half a dozen times every school day, if not more.

He was also staring right at me, and I was finding it hard to breathe.

I’d dreamed of this day so many times.

So. Many. Times.

In high school I used to sit behind him, studying his every move.

When I’d been a junior, and he’d been a senior, we had our first class together.

My last name started with a C, and his with an M. But, since he couldn’t sit in the back thanks to some rule that the coach of the football team at the time had made, he’d had to move to the front, and I’d been pushed back a chair.

And, by doing so, I’d gotten to see his every single feature for an entire year.

Which had been how my infatuation with the man had begun.

At first, it’d only been my appreciation of his body.

He was six-foot-four, muscled, and strapping.

He was also funny, intelligent, and sweet.

He was a caregiver. He was a nurturer. And he also had no clue that I was alive, even then.

Now, he’d grown up quite a bit from that boy that I used to obsess over, but he was still no less captivating.

Today, he was in a simple pair of jeans—covered in dirt and grime from whatever he was doing—probably working on his old truck that he got in high school, and still drove on Sundays to this day.

His white t-shirt was stained, too.

And he had grease on his cheekbone.

His dirty blond hair was longer than normal, and some of it fell into his eyes. Those eyes that were a mix between a golden honey and a seafoam green.

At times, I wasn’t able to tell which color was more prevalent, but I’d decided long ago that it was dependent on the color of shirt he was wearing at the time.

I swallowed when I got a load of the newest tattoo that peeked out from under his shirt sleeve.

It looked like a sugar skull, but honestly, I wasn’t really sure without actually pulling his shirt sleeve up and looking. And that was creepy. I tried not to be creepy.

“Ma’am?”

I gritted my teeth.

He didn’t even know who I was, but I could tell that I was familiar to him, at least somewhat.

He was studying me like he was trying to place how he knew me.

How about school from kindergarten up to my junior year. He had been two years older than me, and since the town of Gun Barrel was so small, the bus route had kids that ranged from kindergarten all the way up to seniors in high school. How about college? I knew Oklahoma State is a big campus, but he never saw me there even once? How about work? He never noticed me at all?

Dammit!

“I’m fine,” I lied.

In all honesty, I was thoroughly embarrassed.

I was also sick at heart.

I had this idea in my mind that maybe I wasn’t quite as invisible as I always felt like I was at times.

Apparently, if the football coach, who knew everybody didn’t even know me, then I was a lost cause.

I smiled.

He winced.

That’s because the movement forced the clot that had stopped the bleeding in my nose to break loose.

Blood trickled down my face.

And I decided now was the time to go.

That was when I looked down.

At my phone. In his hand.

He was holding it out to me.

I took it with shaking fingers as I placed the towel back to my face.

Then, to add insult to injury, I looked down to find my phone not only open but the book I’d been immersed in reading still up.

My cheeks flamed.

There was no way, with him holding it like he had been, that he hadn’t scanned what it was that was on the screen.

None.

And what it was, was my latest book club read, a BDSM romance that had immediately grabbed my attention. Then kept it.

Oh. Shit.

“Thank you,” I murmured, my face likely matching the blood that was probably staining my skin.

Then, I took my bloody towel, my phone, and hightailed it straight out of Target before I could do anything else stupid.

I also pretended that he didn’t see me hit the door on the way out.

Because then I might’ve just crawled into a hole and died.

• • •

“This isn’t the first time I’ve ever heard of someone getting a black eye from something pertaining to Ezra McDuff’s dick,” Camryn supplied.

I flipped her off.

“Go fuck yourself,” I grumbled. “Is it really that bad?”

She winced. “It’s not…good.”

With my pale complexion, paired with my inky black hair…I didn’t doubt that it was more than obvious that I not only had one shiner, but two.

From a box of condoms.

How does that even happen?

But I shouldn’t be surprised. Bad things happened to Raleigh Jolie Crusie. Always had. Always would.

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