But trees weren’t warm.
And they didn’t have one, two, three, four, six, Good Lord, eight? Eight packs? Furthermore, had I actually been feeling said person’s eight pack? And, dear God, I was counting. I had touched each muscle. And great, my hand was still firmly placed against the guy’s stomach.
I jerked my hand back and closed my eyes.
“Were you just counting my abs?” His voice sounded amused. It also sounded like a movie star voice, the type that makes you want to jump into the TV screen. It was deep, strong, and had a slight accent I couldn’t place. British? Scottish?
I took my lower lip between my teeth and thought about what to say. Well, there really was no way out of it. I nodded. “Sorry, I just…” I shouldn’t have looked. If I could go back in time, I would have. I had no idea that one look would devastate me. Weeks from now I would regret that one look, for one reason and one reason only.
His eyes held my ruin.
“Weston.” He held out his hand. “And you are?”
Screwed. “Kiersten.” I clutched the packet tighter against my chest. He squinted at my hands then looked at his.
“You have a germ thing?”
“Huh? What? No?”
“You have a disease?” His hand was still between us, it was getting more awkward by the minute. Just put it away!
“Um, no.”
“Good.” He moved his hand from safe territory, and suddenly he was touching me, well, touching my packet, but I could have sworn I felt every bit of his heat as he slowly peeled it from my grip and freed up my hands. “Now,” he held out his hand again, “where were we?”
What the heck was wrong with me? It wasn’t that I didn’t want to shake his hand. It was just that I was embarrassed and I wanted to leave, and I wasn’t sure if he was just being nice to me to be nice or — wow, I needed therapy.
Clearing my throat, I reached over and shook his hand. At his smirk, I panicked. He clenched my hand within his and looked down at our joining, then mumbled something under his breath. I felt the loss when he finally released my fingers.
“See?” He handed back my packet. “That wasn’t so hard, now was it?”
“No.” I swallowed and my eyes darted across the crowded lawn. I seriously couldn’t stare at him in the face; that was how gorgeous he was. I’d never seen such a good-looking guy in real life before. Sure, I’d seen them on magazines and movies, but this guy… He was living, breathing, walking sex. And considering I had no experience in that department, I was putting up every wall I could think of in order to remember to breathe.
His eyes were a pale blue, his hair a golden blond that was a little too long and curled by his ears. And his smile. Well, his smile would probably haunt me for the rest of my life. It was easy, and his dimples only made it worse. And then there was his smell. A mixture of some sort of cinnamon and something else I couldn’t really put my finger on. It irritated me how easy it seemed for him to smile, as if nothing was wrong in the world when everything felt like it inside. He wanted to shake my hand and know my name and I wanted to get the hell out of there and sit in my room, preferably rocking back and forth in a corner until my anti-depressants decided to kick in to high gear.
“So,” he said with a chuckle. “We go from you touching my abs, straight to insulting me by not shaking my hand, and then to daydreaming. That sound about right?”
“Oh my gosh.” I closed my eyes. “I’m sorry. It’s my first day, and I’m just… nervous.” There, that sounded good, not at all like I was seconds away from having a minor freak out.
“Let me help?”
“But I don’t know you,” I blurted.
“Sure you do.” Somehow he maneuvered himself around me so that his arm was resting on my shoulder and we were walking back toward my dorm. Holy crap. This is how girls were taken advantage of. Panicking, I searched the lawn for Lisa, but she was nowhere to be found.
“No.” I dug my heels into the ground. “I, uh, I need to find my roommate and my ID card! I have to grab my ID card. Well, first I need to find my RA…” I sounded like a lost kid at the park. Funny, because most of the time I felt that way, lost, like a missing puzzle piece that forgot it was a part of the rest of the puzzle. The outcast, the loner the—
“—I believe,” he said, smirking, “that I said I’d help you.”
“I don’t need that kind of help,” I whispered.
“Huh?” He stopped walking and then burst out laughing. “Holy shit, I think I may love you.”
Heart meet stomach.
He kept laughing and pulled me tighter to him. Well, at least my uncle wouldn’t have to worry about paying for college. I was like ten minutes away from being taken. Like in the movie, Taken, only I didn’t have a bad ass dad to come save me. My heart clenched again.
“I’m not going to take advantage of you,” Weston said. “No offense, but you look way too innocent for my tastes, which you again proved when you wrongfully assumed I wanted to help myself into your pants.”
My face erupted in flames.
“Also…” We kept walking. “You’re a freshman. I don’t do freshmen, as in, I don’t date them. Hell, I don’t usually even help them, but you did almost knock me over, and regardless of how much you deny it, you were counting my abs—”
“I wasn’t—”