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A half-naked Z in my bedrooht, and unlike outside with Harvey, it’s not such a terrible feeling Which just makes the whole situation feel worse Re about Z naked Not just about hang sx with hi hiuy, everything I know to stay away fro by staring at the wall and not at himent really is

"You can look now The wet clothes are off"

I realize my mistake as soon as I turn around Z didn’t tell one And they are But the blanket I gave hi there, watching ray socks with a s seconds I can do nothing but stare He should look ridiculous with his socks all sluh, but he doesn’t Instead, he’s gorgeous All long and lean and bronzed andhot I can feel ht of hi in my stomach moves lower and it takes every ounce of willpower I have not to touch hiot his snakebites in this afternoon, and suddenly I want to knohat the little silver balls will feel like against my lips when I kiss him If I kiss hi to get killed And even if I wasn’t, the glimpses I’ve seen of him--of the scars on his body and the ones that lurk beneath his pretty-boy facade--scare the hell out of rateful for what he did, but I’o

"Give me your stuff," I tell him in the most I’e Of course, it’d probably beif I could catchin the dryer"

"You don’t have to do that"

"I kind of do It seeracious to let you freeze to death after you keptinto another statistic"

"Hey That asole wasn’t going to hurt you I wouldn’t have let hiave hile of blankets on my unmade bed, pulls the top one off, and winds it around himself Then he buries his face in it and pulls a deep breath in through his nose My whole body goes hot when I figure out what he’s doing He picked that blanket so he could sht does all kinds of crazy things to ives me all kinds of feels I just don’t want It’s all I can do to keep froain But then I’d be faced with that chest and those abs and all those gorgeous tattoos

At this point, I don’t knoould be worse

The s Of course he does How could he not when girls drop at his feet wherever he goes?

Forcing my sudden attack of lust back down to wherever it caather up his clothes and a couple of dollars in quarters and run theet back, he’s standing in front of my bookshelf, my battered copy of Catcher in the Rye in his hands

Why am I not surprised? Of course he’s a Holden Caulfield fan

"You like this book?" he asks, his voice so casual that I know he’s really interested in the answer

"Yeah Do you?"

He shrugs "I’ve never read it"

"Not even junior year in high school?" I ask, surprised I thought rich boys like him were all about fancy schools

"I was never much of a student By the time I was fifteen, I’d been kicked out of every major private school in Park City and Salt Lake City"

Now that doesn’t surprise lances at the innocuous red-and-white cover "Oh, yeah? Why’s that?"

"The ets kicked out of a bunch of schools, too He’s pretty much one of the best antiheroes ever written" I move into e, a ht me for Christmas last year "You want so?"

"Yeah, sure"

I gesture to the little carousel I’ve got that holds all the different K-cups, but he’s too interested in the blurb on the back of the book to notice "You can borrow that if you want," I tell him

Immediately he puts it down "No, that’s okay"

"You sure? It’s a great story With that book, Salinger proved--long before US pop culture figured it out--that antiheroes actually make the best heroes"

Now he looks at the book like it’s a king cobra that’s got hiood I’ve never been much of a reader"

"I didn’t used to be, either" I pop , then hit brew If he doesn’t like it, he should have told me what he wanted

"Really? With a na"

Because I can sense the tension in hie of topic "Nope Not really"

"So, what changed?" he asks At ot a lot of books here"

I think about those long weeks in the hospital, the longer weeks lying on the sofa at ho for the pain to go away It never did

"It’s a long story"

His usually cocky sone, and in its place is an intensity that takes my breath away "Seems like we have a lot of those between us, don’t we?"