Page 46 of One Last Rodeo

That's the kind of thing friends do for each other.Justfriends.

My smile breaks. “Cool. See you tomorrow morning at the airport then?”

She nods. "Yeah. Okay."

She walks away for good this time, and I watch her go with a smile on my face.

Then I’m left leaning against the gate, my heart pounding like I just rode eight seconds on a bull and took home the buckle, when really all I did was get the prettiest, smartest girl in class to pay attention to me.

Chapter 13 – Catalina

“What did you bring? Oh my God. You brought pizza on this plane, Jensen?” I whisper-shout.

Jensen’s grin is far too big for his handsome face, and his hazel eyes are bright with amusement. Balanced in his arms are a miniature bottle of red wine, a bottle of water, and a plate piled high with two giant, steaming slices of pizza.

He has absolutely no regard for the fact that we're flying first class and they'll be serving us food, or that his pizza is currently perfuming the entire cabin at five o'clock in the morning when most sane people are eating breakfast.

He drops into the seat beside me, elbow bumping while I slide down from embarrassment. Then he pulls out another plate and a wad of questionably squashed napkins from his armpit likehe’s unveiling fine cutlery before flopping them half on my lap and half on his.

“You sure know how to make an entrance,” I huff out.

There’s something about this man that has my body half buzzing and half confused most of the time. He just… shows up. Like a hot disaster in motion. Like a bull in a china shop and it somehow always works out for him.

His light brown hair has absolutely not been brushed this morning, just shoved beneath a baseball cap like he wrestled it on mid-jog through the terminal. His plain white T-shirt has actual, visible grease fingerprints on it—his own, no doubt—his Wrangler jeans are molded to his perfect, fit ass, and he's not carrying a single bag with him. Not even a backpack. Not even a sad plastic convenience-store sack.

I'm guessing he checked his luggage before he got to the airport simply because he couldn't bother with dragging one more thing around. That or he just has enough leftover belongings at his grandma's to carry him through our off week in Tennessee.

“Here.” He plops a greasy slice of pizza onto the empty plate that's now resting on my lap.

Under normal circumstances, the way he lives his life—chaotically, unsupervised, borderline lawless—would send my inner germaphobe sprinting for the emergency exit and a large bottle of hand sanitizer. I’d be obsessing over the fact that he absolutely did not wash his hands after touching every disgusting surface in LAX to get to me. I’d be thinking about doorknobs and security bins, andGod forbid, the flight attendant’s palm he probably high-fived on the way onto the plane when I heard them loudly chatting about his next planned ride.

And now those same fingers have made direct, uninvited contact with my breakfast. Which I should mention, I've already eaten. Coffee and a bagel with egg and sausage. My usual this early in the morning.Notpizza.

But watching him try to fold his way into the first-class seat beside me on our flight from Los Angeles to Nashville has me smiling. Because he's so tall and big and he's different. So different from any other man I’ve ever spent time around. Which is weird. I don’t smile at chaos and mess. Ever. And I definitely don’t find it charming.

Jensen Grant is a lot of things—loud, unbothered by hygiene standards, cavalier about his physical wellbeing, currently adjusting his crotch with the same hand that he touched my pizza—but one thing he absolutely isn’t is boring. And after spending years under sterile OR lighting, a clean, overly lit apartment that I shared with a man who threw away my loyalty like it was trash and running my life like a checklist, maybe I’m enjoying this little streak of unexpected spontaneity.

He catches my gaze like he knows that I'm thinking about him, holds it, then slowly lifts his slice to his mouth and takes a huge bite, crust first.

“Why?” I deadpan, wrestling down a smile that I fail to control.

He chews the crust dramatically, hazel eyes sparkling like a kid doing something forbidden. “It tastes better this way.”

I burst out laughing. “No, it doesn’t. Look at the mess you're making. Your fingers are covered in marinara from trying to hold it like that. You're doing this on purpose because of what I told you."

He doesn't break eye contact. Just keeps chewing. Then starts again. Another big bite. Crust first.

"You’re antagonizing me. This is not a good way to start out this trip. We're already annoyed with each other, and it hasn't even started.”

His grin widens. He takes another aggressive crust-first bite, making a low growl in his throat that sounds dangerouslylike the noise he made between my legs two nights ago.

I squirm in my seat, pretending not to be affected by whatever that sound was.I liked it.

I point a finger at him. “It’s your funeral. It's bad for your health, remember?”

He throws his head back, laughing loudly, chest rattling with pure joy. “We both know you're full of shit for that. Wait—I got you one more thing.”

He tries to reach into his back pocket, wiggling his hips, cursing under his breath about the sling on his right arm that’s currently restricting his movements. It would be comical if it didn’t make every muscle in my body remember what that body feels like over mine when he’s turned on.