Page 114 of Revenge Puck

What the fuck am I doing?

Seriously.

What the fuck am… I. Doing?

Juliette’s bare leg is thrown over mine. My arm is around her waist. She’s talking quietly about something called girl code—how her friend Blaire expects an update or she’ll assume the worst—and I’m nodding like a man who hasn’t built this entire situation on a lie.

Her fingers trace idle lines across my chest absentmindedly.

Trusting.

But see,that’s the problem.

She trusts me.

I know it as well as I know my own damn name.

I look over at her, so close I can see every pore on her skin: face scrubbed clean, lashes bare. No make-up. Damp hair. She looks far younger than she actually is, though to be honest, I have no idea what her age is.

Best not to get too tangled up in details, given the temporary nature of this fucked-up situation.

“You’re quiet,” she murmurs.

“Am I?”

“Mm.” She takes her finger and lightly presses it into the dimple in my cheek. “You get this look when you’re thinking too hard.”

I force a smile. “I’m always thinking.”

“I know, but that’s not what I meant.”

Of course that’s not what she meant.

She’s expecting me to lighten up at some point. She’s expecting me to let my guard down.Shit, she’s probably expecting me to confide in her.

The mood is ripe for it.

Intimate and quiet, except for the sound coming from the TV mounted to my bedroom wall.

“You’re so handsome when you’re deep in thought,” she whispers softly, gutting me further. “I like how your brows go like this.”

She dramatically pulls her brows into aV.

“You like it when I look irritated?” I ask dryly.

“At least you’re not trying to be fake, feeding me lines to get into my pants.”

This time, my smile is real. “The irony is, if I was blowing smoke up your ass, you wouldn’t fall for it, would you?”

The irony is, Iamblowing smoke up her ass to get into her pants.

Juliette doesn’t realize she began as an abstract. She wasn’t a living, breathing person in this story—she was a means to an end. Leverage.

Convenient.

The thought sits ugly in my gut as her big blue doe eyes regard me, her delicate fingers brushing the hair off my forehead.

Get close.