Page 42 of 10 Rings I Hate About You
My breath hitched. I hated him. I also hated how my pulse had picked up—the pre-stage, about-to-speak-in-public-with-a-huge-audience type of cadence, which had nothing to do with public speaking, and everything to do with the fact that he was standing approximately fourteen inches away and smelling unreasonably good.
His eyes lifted again, cool and composed as if the past few minutes hadn’t happened at all.
I realized, with a slow sinking feeling, this was going to be a very long day.
Why did it have to be him?
Chapter Eight
MARC
Delaney brushed past me through the front door of the shelter, her shoulder bumping mine just hard enough to be intentional.
The contact lasted maybe half a second. But my body leaned towards her as though trying to close the distance even further. My brain cataloged the cotton blend of the light sweatshirt she wore and the faint give of her softness beneath. The body heat that seemed disproportionally noticeable for such a brief contact.
I told myself I was simply observing details, the way I always did.
Data collection. Pattern recognition.
The lie sat uncomfortable in my chest.
Her lips pressed together in a way that meant I’d already annoyed her. A new record, even for us.
I arrived forty-five minutes early. Not because I was eager, although the tightness in my shoulders and the fact that I hadchecked my watch seventeen times in the last hour suggested my body disagreed with that assessment.
I didn’t trust chaos. And this grant meant too much for us to lose.
That was the reason. The only reason.
Not because I’d been awake since four-thirty this morning, running through conversation scenarios. Not because I’d changed my shirt twice, settling on the blue one because—and this was irrelevant—Delaney liked blue almost as much as she liked purple.
I drew in a slow breath, clutching my clipboard tight in my hands. My fingertips dug into the plastic so hard I was surprised I didn’t leave permanent indentations.
The pressure grounded me and gave me something to focus on besides the fact that Delaney was here, I was here, and we were about to spend the next several hours in close proximity.
That thought shouldn’t have made my pulse jump, but it did anyway.
I followed her inside. The clinical odor hit me first—industrial cleaner with that almost medicinal edge, mixed with wet dog, hay, and something sweet I couldn’t quite place. The layered scent of animals, care, and organized noise that never fully left a place like this.
And underneath it all?—
Lavender.
Delaney’s lavender.
My shoulders drew back, and I straightened my spine like I was preparing for combat rather than a planning session. I hadn’t noticed it before the other day. That she smelled like lavender. Or maybe I’d been noticing it for months—filing it away in that corner of my brain labeled “Irrelevant Observations About Delaney Hart”, which was, concerningly, becoming rather crowded.
Things like the exact shade of purple in her hair when the sunlight hit it. The way she tucked it behind her left ear, but never her right. How her voice went up half an octave when she was excited, and dropped when she was genuinely angry, as opposed to merely irritated.
I’d told myself I only noticed these things because I noticed everything. Details. It was simply how my brain worked.
Except I couldn’t recall the pitch variation in anyone else’s voice right now.
When I stepped closer, Delaney spun around to face me. Her arms crossed over her chest—a defensive posture, I noted automatically—and her gaze locked onto mine with an intensity that made my stomach twist. Not unpleasantly. Which was, in itself, highly concerning.
“You know,” she said, a harsh edge to her voice, “you could try saying hello first.”
I stopped short. Had I not said hello? I ran through the last sixty seconds in my head. No. No, I hadn’t.Crap.Sometimes I was so focused on what I was going to say next I forgot that part. “Hello?”
