Losing Hope

gets under my skin. I don’t know why, but it does. Just thinking she was Hope for even a few minutes already has me feeling extremely territorial about her.

Especially now as I round the corner and see her standing in front of my house.

She’s here. Why the hell is she here?

I stop running and drop my hands to my knees, keeping my eyes trained on her back while I catch my breath. Why the hell is she standing in front of my house?

She’s at the edge of my driveway, propped up against my mailbox. She’s drained the last of her water bottle and she’s shaking it above her mouth, attempting to get more water out of it, but it’s completely empty. When she realizes this, her shoulders slump and she tilts her face toward the sky.

It’s obvious she’s a runner with those legs.

Holy shit, I can’t breathe.

I try to recall everything on her driver’s license and what all Grayson said about her Saturday night because I suddenly want to know everything there is to know about her. And not because I thought she was Hope, but because whoever she is . . . she’s fucking beautiful. I don’t know that I even noticed how attractive she was at the store, because my mind wasn’t going there. But right now, seeing her in front of me? My mind is all over that.

She takes a deep breath, then begins walking. I immediately kick into gear and ease up behind her.

“Hey, you.”

She pauses at the sound of my voice and her shoulders immediately tense. She turns around slowly and I can’t help but smile at the wary expression strewn across her face.

“Hey,” she says back, shocked to see me standing in front of her. She actually seems more at ease this time. Not as terrified of me as she was in the parking lot, which is good. Her eyes slowly drop down to my chest, then to my shorts. She looks back up at me momentarily, then diverts her gaze to her feet.

I casually lean against the mailbox and pretend to ignore the fact that she totally just checked me out. I’ll ignore it to save her embarrassment, but I’m definitely not going to forget it. In fact, I’ll probably be thinking about the way her eyes scrolled down my body for the rest of the damn day.

“You run?” I ask. It’s probably the most obvious question in the world right now, but I’m completely out of material.

She nods, still breathing heavily from the effect of her workout. “Usually in the mornings,” she confirms. “I forgot how hot it is in the afternoons.” She lifts her hand to her eyes to shield them from the sun while she looks at me. Her skin is flush and her lips are dry. I hold out my water bottle and she flinches again. I try not to laugh, but I feel pretty damn pathetic that I freaked her out so much at the store that she’s afraid I might actually do something to harm her.

“Drink this.” I nudge my water bottle toward her. “You look exhausted.”

She grabs the water without hesitation and presses her lips to the rim, downing several gulps. “Thanks,” she says, handing it back to me. She wipes the water off her top lip with the back of her hand and glances behind her. “Well, I’ve got another mile and a half return, so I better get started.”

“Closer to two and a half,” I say. I’m trying not to stare, but it’s so hard when she’s wearing next to nothing and every single curve of her mouth and neck and shoulders and chest and stomach seems like it was made just for me. If I could preorder the perfect girl, I wouldn’t even come close to the version standing in front of me right now.

I press the bottle of water to my mouth, knowing it’s more than likely the closest I’ll ever get to her lips. I can’t even take my eyes off her long enough to take a drink.

“Huh?” she says, shaking her head. She seems flustered. God, please let her be flustered.

“I said it’s more like two and a half. You live over on Conroe, that’s over two miles away. That’s almost a five-mile run round trip.” I don’t know many girls who run, let alone a five-mile stretch. Impressive.

Her eyes narrow and she pulls her arms up, folding them across her stomach. “You know what street I live on?”

“Yeah.”

Her gaze remains tepid and focused on mine and she’s quiet. Her eyes eventually narrow slightly and it looks like she’s growing annoyed with my continued silence.

“Linden Sky Davis, born September 29; 1455 Conroe Street. Five feet three inches. Donor.”

As soon as the word “donor” leaves my mouth, she immediately steps back, her look of annoyance turning into a mixture of shock and horror. “Your ID,” I say quickly, explaining why I know so much about her. “You showed me your ID earlier. At the store.”

“You looked at it for two seconds,” she says defensively.

I shrug. “I have a good memory.”

“You stalk.”

I laugh. “I stalk? You’re the one standing in front of my house.” I point to my house behind me, then tap my fingers against the mailbox to show her that she’s the one encroaching. Not me.

Her eyes grow wide in embarrassment as she takes in the house behind me. Her face grows redder with the realization of how it must look for her to be randomly hanging out in front of my house. “Well, thanks for the water,” she says quickly. She waves at me and turns around, breaking into a stride.

“Wait a sec,” I yell after her. I run past her and turn around, trying to think up an excuse for her not to leave just yet. “Let me refill your water.” I reach down and grab her water bottle. “I’ll be right back.” I take off toward the house, hoping to buy myself some more time with her. I’ve obviously got a lot to make up for in the first- impressions department.

“Who’s the girl?” my mother asks once I reach the kitchen. I run Sky’s bottle of water under the tap until it’s full, then I turn around to face her. “Her name is Sky,” I say, smiling. “Met her at the grocery store earlier.”

My mother glances out the window at her, then looks back at me and cocks her head. “And you already brought her to our house? Moving a little quickly, don’t you think?”

I hold up the water bottle. “She just happened to be running by and now she’s out of water.” I walk toward the door and turn back to my mother and wink. “Lucky for me, we just happen to have water.”

She laughs. The smile on my mother’s face is nice because they’ve been so few and far between. “Well, good luck, Casanova,” she calls after me.

I run the water back out to Sky and she immediately takes another drink. I attempt to find a way to rectify her first impression of me.

“So . . . earlier?” I say hesitantly. “At the store? If I made you uneasy, I’m sorry.”

She looks me straight in the eyes. “You didn’t make me uneasy.”

She’s lying. I absolutely made her uneasy. Terrified her, even. But she’s looking at me now with such confidence.

She’s confusing. Really confusing.

I watch her for a minute, trying my best to read her, but I have no clue. If I was to hit on her right now, I don’t know if she’d punch me or kiss me. At this point, I’m pretty sure I’d be more than okay with either.

“I wasn’t trying to hit on you, either,” I say, wanting to get some sort of reaction from her. “I just thought you were someone else.”

“It’s fine,” she says softly. Her smile is tight-lipped and the disappointment in her voice is clear. It makes me smile, knowing that disappointed her a little bit.

“Not that I wouldn’t hit on you,” I clarify. “I just wasn’t doing it at that particular moment.”

She smiles. It’s the first time I actually get a genuine smile from her and it feels like I just won a triathlon.

“Want me to run with you?” I ask, pointing toward her path home.

“No, it’s fine.”

I nod, but don’t like her answer. “Well, I was going that way anyway. I run twice a day and I’ve still got a couple . . .”

I take a step closer to her when I notice the fresh, prominent bruise under her eye. I grab her chin and tilt