Authors: Liz Reinhardt
I lean over the balcony and pull a magnolia flower close, rubbing the waxy petals with the
tip of my fingers.
"You're going to see him again. I know it. I can
feel
it. Those shoes are hot-sweet-magic-sex shoes. They work."
Her l
augh is gleeful and happy on my behalf
,
so I don't roll my eyes at her.
B
ut it's hard to resist the temptation.
I steer the conversation on to other things, like Brenna's sexy-sweet boyfriend, her crazy, over-loaded, over-achiever school schedule, and her design business, which has expanded to include bumper stickers and pins.
I love listening to her chatter.
Gramma
said
that one of her biggest disappointments
is that I didn't meet someone like Brenna sooner.
Someone who could have helped give me direction.
Someo
ne who could have kept
me from doing what I do best: crash and burn.
I'm sad to let the lone
ray of suns
hine in my otherwise cloudy world
go, but I have to say goodbye to Bren and start getting ready for day one of community service. I have such a towering pile of days to complete, I'm not even going to count.
I pull on jeans, a t-shirt, and boots, and pull my hair into a ponytail.
Simple.
Okay, maybe the jeans are perfectly butt-hugging and low-riding enough to still be sexy, and the t-shirt is gauzy and cut in just
a
d
eep enough
v to give me a sultry
feel, and the boots have a tiny heel and are gorgeous, dark leather. But I wear a uniform every single day to school. There's no way I can throw on any old thing
, even
to do community service. This outfit is the plainest I can manage.
Gramma
and Granddaddy are at one of the dozens of
golf tournament
s they spend all year
attending
, so there's no one to say goodbye to as I hop into my car and drive to the site.
I'm not exactly sure what I'll be doing, but they told me to dress for
potentially dirty
work.
Which I half listened to.
Sweat slicks my palms and makes my hands slide over the steering wheel as I drive past favorite restaurants, stores, and salons. My weekends won't be spent indulging in my wild material girl side or driving to the beach house to polish off a bottle of something sweet and numbing,
and then sleep
it off with the sound of the crashing waves in the background.
I will be servicing my community
each Saturday for all the hours of my morning and most of my afternoon, too
, and by the time I'm done, everyone
else
will be in the middle of their weekend benders.
Anyway, I can't get involved with that stuff anymore
even
if I wanted to. Since I broke up with my disgusting pig of an ex-boyfriend, I moved
across town from my old neighborhood
, changed schools
in my senior year
, and dabbled in
reckless
criminal mischief
, so I’ve blown any chances for local friends
.
The only person who loves and accepts me is Brenna, and she lives in godforsaken New Jersey and is deaf to my pleas to move to the more hospitable and sunny
South
.
I'm alone here.
But, given my record for going
apeshit
when I have an audience, that's probably a good thing for me.
I pull up to
a little office in the backwoods of nowhere and grab my paperwork. I have to h
ave it signed by the foreman, or
whatever they call the officer in charge of watching all of us criminals. When I get inside, there's a little desk where a woman in uniform is checking off names and giving out tasks. I give her my name and she squints at the paper for a minute.
"Even Lennox?" she double-checks.
"That's me." I clutch at the paper in my hands nervously and chew my lip. Did I somehow manage to screw things up already?
"You'll be painting today." She eyes my outfit. "We have smocks you can change into."
My cheekbones feel singed. "It's okay. These are work clothes."
It's not a lie. My work clothes just happen to be very fashion-forward.
"Suit yourself. You'll start in the station room, around the corner to the left. You've painted before
, I assume
?"
I nod, and this time my answer is a complete lie I pray won't bite me in the ass.
"Good. There are several guards who will be patrolling the premises regularly. Stay on task or your service card won't be signed, and you'll have to make today up. If you need help, come to this office or give a holler."
She shoos me away with a wave of her
unmanicured
, jewelry-less hand, and I go around the corner and to the left.
The door is open and there's a radio blaring. I can hear the rhythmic sweep and clack of a paint roller.
I guess
I'll be working with someone else.
I walk in the doorway and a huge drip of light blue paint blobs on the
dropcloth
at my feet. I step over it and almost crash into...
him.
"
Oh!
What are you doing here?" I demand
stupidly
as he stops rolling paint on the walls and stares at
me, shock naked all over his
face.
"What am
I
doing here? What are
you
doing here?" His mouth p
ulls tight, a
bow
string
just before the arrow flies. "Un-fucking-believable,
Kevon
," he mutters
, and he eyes me from the top of my ponytail to the tip of my inappropriate footwear with a
look
that
is definitely pissed
-
off and annoyed
.
"Excuse me?"
I feel stupidly over-dressed and unprepared for even this simple day of painting, and now the one person who was slightly nice to me on one of the most embarrassing days of my life is being a complete and utter ass, and it’s caught me off guard.
I
immediately
hate myself for having had a crush on him, and I hate him with instant, total fury. If he couldn’t bother to be nice when he saw me, he could have at least been neutral and not made me feel like an out-of-place idiot.
Anger settles on my tongue like a hot pepper, and one bite is all it will take for me to access the spicy heat.
"I just, uh, didn't expect you.
Didn't expect to see you.
Again."
He tosses the roller into the tray and paces, running a hand over his short, black hair. "Th
is is..." He looks up at me, those
deep blue eyes
scanning my fa
ce the way honor students speed-
read
a
book a minute before an
exam. He clenches his teeth so
hard his jaw ticks, and then
announces, "I should sign up for another duty station."
I crunch down on the pepper of my anger and my temper flares
. I want to keep cool, but I lash out blindly, my emotions too overwhelming to hold in check
.
Every insecurity
about this crazy day bubbles to the surface and leaves me raw.
"Sorry it's such a huge issue to work with me. You know, where I come from, judging someone based on their clothes is considered a real
ly
shitty thing to do. I may dress well, but that doesn't mean I'm useless."
I stalk a few feet closer to him, so angry I should be able to jump right in his face. But something about him stops me.
He's perfectly still, perfectly quiet and cool, but there's a dangerous edge in those warm
blue eyes. Like the outside of a volcano, dormant for so long you forget how vicious it can be until it explodes.
"It's not your clothes. It's not that I don't think you can work." His voice is low and deceptively sweet, candy from a stranger I know I shouldn't take. "It's just not a good idea if we work together.
Nothing personal."
But his eyes, half deep blue velvet, half dark blue diamond, tell me loud and clear that his declaration is a bald lie. This is all only personal, and I decide to throw my stubborn pride out the window and plead my case.
Which is weird for me.
I don’t ple
ad my case to anyone.
Ever.
And
especially not
to
guys.
But there’s something about Winchester. Somethi
ng that makes me run boiling then
frigid, something I’m attracted to and can’t stand
at the same time
.
And part of me wants him around
, need
s
him even
.
Here.
With me.
For practical reasons.
And for other, less practical reasons.
Reasons that have to do with the energy that crackles between us in this room.
Energy that’s waking up something in me that’s been dormant since way before I axed my ex.
I put one hand on his wrist and our eyes both snap down to it before I pull away, the tingle of his skin’s warmth still on my fingertips.
"Look, I'm in enough trouble right now. I'm just trying to keep my head down and get through this damn day. If you hate working with me after today, feel free to talk to the warden or whoever the hell manages this stuff. But please don't make me look bad right now. I promise
,
you won't even know I'm here."
To prove my point, I walk over to the tray, pick up the roller, sop up some paint, and roll it
along the wall.
Paint gushes out of both end
s of the roller and leaves long, sloppy dribbles on either side, but I play it cool and act like that's what
I meant to do all along.
I roll
another long stripe of paint as far up as I can reach and bend down to get all the way to the bottom. The paint isn't going
on as thick, so I dip the roller
again and make another squishy line.
I feel his heat when he
walks up behind me, like I have my own personal
human-sized sun radiating warmth against my back.
"You're making a mess." I can hear his smile curved against his words.
I push the roller back up and d
own the wall, and it sputters with
an uneven gush of paint. "Why don't you do your thing and leave me to do mine?"
My heart thumps, quick and hard as the slap of a two kids
’ hands
playing Miss Mary Mack.
"Because if I let you keep going like that, my
‘
thing
’
is going to be
‘
redoing your paint job.
’
Give it here for a second."
He holds one hand out, and I stare at the long, strong fingers
that I imagine doing a whole slew of
absolutely
naughty, amazing things
before I hand the roller over.
He squats down in front of a tray and points. "The idea isn't to soak up as much paint as possible and smear it on the walls." He roll
s the tool in the tray with an easy dip
, giving the roller an even coat. "You want to reapply more often and make uniform coats. Also you want to paint in a big W-shape. Like this." He pick
s a wall and rolls a clean, effortless
W.
I should be watching his technique, but it's hard to focus when the coiled muscles of
his back bulge against the
stretch of his
threadbare
t-shirt. He repeats the lines, saying something about even pressure and blend, but I'm a little obsessed with the way his arm muscles stretch and
contract.
When he turns
back to check on me,
it's like he can read on my face how completely I was not paying attention to
his instructions. H
e
shakes his head and
directs
a reluctant smile at the grisly
blue paint.
My mouth goes a little dry. I love that smile.
I want more of that smile.
I want it centered on me.
For me.
"You want to try?"
He holds the roller out
and breaks through my thoughts, which have stayed on his mouth, but strayed
to
way
less innocent actions than smiles
.