Page 70 of 10 Rings I Hate About You
Outside the front door, the air felt different. Tension filled it as Marc and I stood there together, unsure of what to do next, but fully knowing things between us had changed.
He touched my arm. Gentle. Calm. “Can I have your number?”
I should have just said yes.
Instead, my mouth opened and said, “Planning to send scandalous yoga strap messages?” The teasing words popped out before my brain had any input on the matter.
His head lifted slowly.
His eyes found mine.
His gaze sharpened—clicked into focus—a gear engaging. The mild-mannered vet was still there, but beneath it something quieter, steadier, and considerably more dangerous than I’d been counting on.
“If I was going to do that,” he said, his voice dropping lower than I’d ever heard it. Rough, sexy, and certain, with an undertone of that growl from earlier. “You wouldn’t have to ask.”
My pulse forgot its job. Not teasing. Not a deflection.A promise.
I watched a flicker of surprise move across his face, a brief sense of awareness of his words, and then the resolution not to take them back.
Sweet mother of God.His words. His tone. My body throbbed and my girly parts pulsed.
I forced a grin because I had to do or say something else, or I might melt into the ground. “Touché, Kingsley.” I handed him my phone.
He held my gaze for one more beat before taking it. Heat hit my cheeks, air puffed from my lungs—short and breathless, a moan built at the back of my throat. If he didn’t turn away soon, I wasn’t going to be held accountable for my actions.
He handed my phone back to me. Then he turned in the direction of my car with that particular quietness he carried everywhere and opened the door before I’d even reached for the handle.
“I—” My usually reliable vocabulary malfunctioned as I stepped into the car. “Thank you.”
He shrugged, as though it hadn’t occurred to him that it might be notable.
Of course it hadn’t.
That was exactly the problem.
Andthatwas dangerous information.
“Goodnight, Delaney.” He shut my door gently, deliberately, like it mattered. How he handled all the important things in his life.
Almost likeIdeserved to be handled the same way.
He walked to his car and didn’t turn back once.
Part of me waited to see if he would. The part of me that waited was a problem I was going to need to deal with later, privately, possibly with wine.
Hatred had been simple. Predictable and safe.
It had a shape I knew. An architecture I’d built and reinforced for twenty years. It explained everything about Marc Kingsley without requiring me to look any closer.
This—the noticing, the softness around the edges, the way he’d said “you wouldn’t have to ask” like he already knew what he was offering—this had no recognizable basis. It had no comfortable structure to hold on to.
And he didn’t even know he’d done it.
That was the worst part.
He’d just said it—quietly, with complete assurance—and then walked away as though he hadn’t handed me a thing I didn’t know what to do with and didn’t have the decency to take back, so I couldn’t pretend it hadn’t happened.
Twenty years of unshakable certainty.
