Page 66 of Timid (Lark Cove 2)

My eyes shot open. “What about you? Should I . . .” I swallowed. “Do you want a hand job?”

Hand job? Turns out, I had plenty of energy left to be embarrassed, and I was never saying hand job again.

“No, that was just for you.” Jackson smiled as the heat crept up my cheeks. “Come here.”

He shifted on the couch, tossing up both of his legs so he was lying down. As he moved, he shifted my legs to one side, positioning me so I was tucked down his entire length.

I was trapped between his strong body and the back of the couch, lying on his chest.

Not a bad place to be stuck.

The skirt of my dress was still bunched up my thighs, so I wiggled it down. My gaze tracked down his body, his long legs hanging well over the other armrest.

“I need a bigger couch.”

“Nah. This one works just fine.”

I giggled, snuggling deeper into his side.

“Your hair is so soft.” With the arm underneath me, he toyed with a strand.

“So is yours.” I’d thought it would be spiky, but it felt more like velvet. “I like that you keep it short.”

“Me too. I hated it when Hazel first made me buzz it off, but then I got used to it. It’s actually a bit curly when it grows out.”

“Really?” I kind of wanted to see him with curls. “Why did Hazel make you cut it?”

“Lice,” he grumbled. “My whole foster home got it one year. I used the shampoo and shit to kill them, but Hazel didn’t want to take any chances that I’d pass them on to Thea. So she made me buzz it all off. After that, I never grew it back. It’s easier this way.”

Lice. Just the word made my scalp itch, but I resisted the urge. “That sounds awful.”

“It was. There was this little girl who lived with u

s at the time. She had this long, brown hair. It had the same kind of waves as yours. No matter how many times they shampooed her, they’d still find eggs so they made her chop it all off. I’ve never seen a person cry so hard.”

As a woman who loved her hair, my heart hurt for that little girl. “Poor thing.”

“I didn’t really get it at first. I thought it was just a girl thing to get so worked up over a haircut. But later she told me that her mother was getting out of jail soon and she was worried that without her hair, her mom wouldn’t recognize her to take her home.”

And now my heart broke for the little girl. “Did her mom come back for her?”

“Yeah. She got released a few months later and took the girl home. I always wondered if her mom stayed out of trouble.”

I dropped my cheek back onto his chest. “I hope she did. For the girl’s sake.”

“Me too, babe.”

Babe. He’d called me babe earlier, right before I’d come. Maybe it wasn’t so bad.

Maybe it was actually kind of perfect.

“That one. Babe. I think I like it now.”

“Thank god.” He laughed. “I was running out of options.”

“So how’s it going with Jackson?” Mom asked before taking a bite of her salad.

“Good.” Wonderful.