“You’re a bastard,” she hissed.
“Yes I am. Now get your clothes on.”
BLYTHE
After changing into a pair of cutoff sweatpants and a tank top, I dug my glasses out of my bag and put them on, then pulled my hair up into a messy bun to get it out of the way. Tonight I planned on writing, but first I had to find something to cook for dinner. I had bought several things at the store that I could easily make. I just wasn’t sure what I was in the mood for.
On my way to the kitchen a knock sounded at my door and I stopped and stared at it. That had to be Krit. No one else ever came by. Glancing down at myself I debated on running back in the room and changing. At least jerking my hair back down and taking off these glasses.
No. I would not do that. Krit wasn’t here to be impressed with how I looked. He probably just wanted advice on a shirt. I forced myself to walk over to the door just as I was and open it up.
Krit’s slow grin lit up his face as he took in the way I was dressed. At least I could amuse him. “Aren’t you too f**king adorable for words,” he said.
I wasn’t adorable but I wasn’t going to argue with him. “Hey,” I replied, then the smell of pizza hit my nose and I realized he wasn’t empty handed. He was carrying a box from the pizza place down the street.
He held the box out so I could see it. “I need help eating this,” he said with his entirely too sexy grin on his face.
Why he was here yet again with food to share with me I wasn’t sure. Did he really like being around me? Was this what friendship was? I stepped back and let him walk inside. He stopped in front of me and lifted a finger and touched the tip of my nose. “Those glasses,” he said and chuckled and shook his head. Then he walked toward the table with the pizza.
He hadn’t looked like he was making fun of me and my glasses, but what had he meant by that? I closed the door and gave myself a moment to adjust to him being in here before turning to look at him. He was already walking into the kitchen to help himself to plates.
If he was teasing me about my glasses that was okay because friends teased each other. Right? I think they did. I could handle some friendly teasing. I knew I looked like a complete nerd in my glasses. It wasn’t like I thought they were attractive. Krit was used to the women in his world being beautiful and perfect. Maybe that was why he liked me. He didn’t get distracted by my looks.
That was a completely depressing thought.
“You gonna stand there frowning at this perfectly yummy pizza or come eat some?” Krit asked as he held out a plate to me.
I was being awkward again. He was here to be nice and friendly and I was making this weird. I shoved my thoughts about why Krit was here aside and forced a smile. He had brought me dinner. I wouldn’t have to cook now. This was a good thing. I wasn’t here to waste time with a guy anyway. I had a life to build. A book to write. I had goals.
“That’s my girl,” he said as I took the plate from his hand.
I wasn’t his girl. He didn’t mean anything by that. Telling myself that didn’t keep my silly heart from picking up its pace. But then all Krit had to do was grin at me or wink and my heart went into a frenzy. It was as if my body couldn’t deal with the excitement that came along with Krit.
“How’s the job?” Krit asked as he pulled out a chair and sat down.
I shrugged. Not much to tell him really. “Good. I enjoy it. I don’t deal with a lot of people and the pastor is really nice.” I didn’t mention Linc. Especially after the kiss we had shared today. I wasn’t ready to talk about Linc. I wasn’t sure what I was feeling where he was concerned. And I didn’t need Krit reading into anything I said.
“You ever gonna come listen to me play?” he asked, then took a bite of his pizza.
No. More than likely not. Going to a club where I knew no one other than a guy on the stage did not sound appealing at all. It sounded terrifying. However, I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.
“I’m not sure. I don’t do that scene, or I never have. I wouldn’t even know anyone.”
Krit studied me a moment. “You could bring a friend,” he finally said.
A friend. I had two of those. At least I thought I did. I was still trying to figure out what constituted a friend.
“I’ll see if I have one that wants to go with me,” I told him, wanting to change the subject.
“You have that public speaking class yet?” he asked.
I nodded. I had suffered through it and somehow made it out on the other side alive. But that didn’t mean I would always get out of being called on to go up front. “Not my favorite,” I admitted.
“You really have a problem with attention don’t you?” he asked as he finished off his first slice of pizza.
He had no idea how much of a problem I had with attention. He loved it. I hadn’t seen him perform yet, but I could tell by the look on his face when he talked about it that he adored having all eyes on him. I had no doubt those eyes on him loved every minute of it too. Having a reason to look at Krit was always nice.
“I just don’t have good experiences with it. . . . I like to go unnoticed.” I wasn’t telling him anymore. My past needed to stay in the past. This was my now and my future. I didn’t want to bring all the ugliness and pain from my past into the life I had now.
“Problem with that, love, is that you’re really f**king hard not to notice,” Krit said with a small smile on his lips, but a sincerity in his gaze that made me think he didn’t mean that in a bad way. Almost as if he was saying he liked what he saw.
“I try to blend in,” I replied, not sure if I was misunderstanding him or not. I wanted to believe he meant that as a compliment, but how could he?
“That’s a shame,” he said, then reached for another piece of pizza.
I decided to change the subject and asked him about how he learned to play the guitar. Our conversation became easy then and relaxed. I loved hearing his voice and listening to him laugh.
What I didn’t expect was that Krit would show up every evening like this and eat with me for the next two weeks. But he did. And I liked it. No, I didn’t just like it . . . I planned my day around it.
KRIT
It was becoming a habit. That was all. Nothing more. I was not addicted to her. I wasn’t. Just a nice little distraction. Seeing Blythe in the evenings before I left for my gigs was a way to have a moment to just be me. Blythe didn’t require me to be anything else.
Last night she had actually rolled her eyes at one of my jokes and thrown her napkin at me. It had taken every ounce of strength I had to stay in my seat and not grab her face and taste those full lips. She wasn’t nervous with me anymore. She smiled at me and let me in when I knocked on her door.
Somehow she had become my level ground. The place I could go to find myself before I went out and entertained everyone. She didn’t hang on me and beg me for anything. It was easy with Blythe.
Or at least I kept telling myself that.
If I acknowledged the truth, I would panic. So instead I was going to believe this was all I wanted from her. Just seeing her was enough. Hearing her laugh made my f**king day.
“Hey,” she said with that smile from heaven as she stepped back and let me inside her apartment.
“I got the pad Thai you like,” I said, holding up the bag from the Thai place down the street. After watching her make those sweet little moaning noises as she ate it the last time I picked it up, I decided I needed to watch her eat it again.
Her eyes lit up, and she clapped her hands and bounced on her feet like a little girl. Women who looked like Blythe were not supposed to be so damn cute. Seeing her get excited over food made me want to feed her three meals a day.
“I made sweet tea just like you showed me. Come, taste it. I think I got it right,” she said as she hurried to the kitchen.
Two nights ago she had said she loved sweet tea, but she didn’t know how to make it, and buying it was too expensive. So I’d taught her how. You would have thought I was brilliant by the way she watched me and asked me questions. It was as if I was conducting a science experiment. Another thing about Blythe: she made me feel important. Needed. Like I was a part of her life that she relied on.
That felt f**king good. Too good.
But I was not addicted. I didn’t care what Green said. Blythe was not an addiction. I hated that he had started accusing me of that.
I sat the bag down on Blythe’s kitchen table and followed her to the bar where she was filling up a glass of ice with tea from the gallon-size plastic pitcher I had brought her when I taught her how to make sweet tea.
“Taste it,” she said with excitement dancing in her eyes.
If this tasted like shit, I wasn’t going to be able to tell her. Not with her looking like that. Hurting Blythe was something I was incapable of. I would lie to make her smile. I had done just that last week when she had made me a grilled cheese and burned it. She had seemed so worried about what I thought, so I swallowed every last bite like it was the best thing I had ever put in my mouth.
Preparing myself for the worst, I picked up the glass and took a drink. The sweet taste was just right. She had nailed it. No bitterness in the tea—the perfect blend of ice and sugar. Grinning, I set the glass down and smacked my lips. “Perfect, love. That was f**king perfect.”
“Really?” she asked, her eyes shining brightly.
It was times like this all I wanted to do was scoop her up and kiss her until we were both stripping off each other’s clothes. Fuck. Shit. I was not going to think about that again. I had to stop thinking about her nak*d.
She was the kind of girl you had a relationship with. Not the kind you f**ked because you couldn’t stop lusting over her. She was also becoming important to me. To my sanity. I needed her. And f**king her would ruin that. This thing we had—I couldn’t ruin it. I had never had this before, and it was too important to mess up.
“Really. Fill up my glass, and let’s go eat,” I told her as I turned away from those eyes and went to get plates out of the cabinet.
“You want a fork?” I asked her, already knowing the answer. She had attempted to eat the pad Thai with chopsticks last time, and it had been a disaster.
She laughed and nodded.
I grabbed us both a fork and headed to the table to fix our plates. This was what I wasn’t willing to lose. I had never had a place where I felt like I belonged. This wasn’t the kind of friendship I was used to, and I loved it. I woke up every morning thinking about what I would bring to dinner and what we would talk about. Things would happen during the day, and the first person who I wanted to tell was Blythe. In the short month since she had moved in, she had made herself the most important person in my life.
Fuck.
I turned around to see her grinning at me like I’d hung the moon, and my heart clenched. No. This was wrong. I wasn’t that guy. She needed to see the real me. The me I was when I wasn’t here eating dinner with her and talking about our days. She was looking at me with . . . oh, hell no. She was looking at me with something more.
I set the fork down and stared at the table. I had to remind her. She had to remember who I was. I was only worthy of her friendship. She had to remember we would always be just friends. This need I had for her company was confusing her. It was in her eyes. Those big beautiful eyes were so expressive and trusting.
Fuck. Fuck. Shit!
“I, uh, I’m running late. I gotta run. Didn’t look at the time. Sorry, but you have plenty of pad Thai you can eat. Uh, yeah, I’ll see you . . . later,” I rambled. Panic was in my voice, but I couldn’t help it. Backing up from the table, I forced myself to smile at her, but I didn’t look in her eyes. I couldn’t. I turned and got the hell out of there.
Protecting Blythe was my original intention. Someone needed to protect her, but damn it, I hadn’t protected her from me. But there was still time to show her what she had forgotten during our cozy dinners. I was Krit Corbin. I was the lead singer in a band and I f**ked women. Lots of them.
Chapter Six
BLYTHE
No one’s sweet tea was that bad. But I couldn’t figure out what else I had done. Krit had left my apartment like he couldn’t get away fast enough. That was two weeks ago, and he hadn’t been back since. That night, and every night since then, his parties had been going until late.
I used the iPod he left me and, luckily, it worked. I was able to sleep, and only occasionally did loud banging on the ceiling wake me; it made things rattle in my apartment. Other than that, I was okay.
I stood at my door for an hour last night trying to work up the nerve to open it and go upstairs to see Krit. Maybe I should apologize for something, but I didn’t know what that would be. I had made sweet tea. He had liked it and gotten our plates. Then . . . then he suddenly left. I had thought it was odd, but I believed him that he was running late and hadn’t noticed the time.
But he didn’t come back the next evening. And after a week had gone by, I knew it had to be me. I hadn’t gone to his apartment to face him because I couldn’t stand it if he was disgusted with me. I shouldn’t have let him get too close. I shouldn’t have gotten comfortable with him. I had been ridiculously excited about my sweet tea. He had shown me how to make it, and that batch had been my third attempt. I was so sure I had gotten it right.