World's Worst Boyfriend: A Romantic Comedy Adventure (Fake It Book 3), Carina Taylor [ebook reader online txt] 📗

I trembled as he kept a gentle but firm grip on me. His eyes remained locked on mine as he used his tongue to clean up the chocolate. I couldn’t stop my tongue from darting out to wet my lips.

He knew exactly what he was doing to me.

He winked and proceeded to carefully wipe away the remnants of melted chocolate with the paper towel. I stared at his long, brown eyelashes that brushed his cheeks as he stared down at my hand. He grabbed another clean paper towel and began to carefully clean in between my fingers.

“Wha—” I cleared my throat. His hands felt really, and I mean really, good. “What are you doing?”

“I’m installing a better lock system. Yours is so weak, it had me worried for when you were home alone. I don’t like to think about what could happen.” So that was how it was. He was going to pretended like he didn’t just make out with my hand. And that I’d let him.

I could play this game too. “Fletcher. We’ve talked about this before.”

“Yes, and you agreed that I could install a better lock system.”

“But then we broke up.”

“Just because you broke my heart doesn’t mean I want to see you hurt,” he ground out.

“I didn’t—” I swallowed the lump in my throat. I hadn’t broken his heart. He was the one who had broken mine. He chose work over me, time and time again. He didn’t get to play the broken-heart card.

“Fletcher…what are we doing?”

He stopped wiping my hand and stepped back to throw the dirty paper towels away. “I don’t know, Saidy, I just know I can’t imagine a world without you in it.”

“What about your world? Were you going to make room for me in it?”

“I want to. Lord knows I want to. But I want to keep you safe as well.”

His quiet voice cut straight through me as he turned to face me. Those tired, gorgeous eyes pulling me in. I whispered, “I wish—.”

I wished we would have worked.

I wished he would hold me one more time.

I wished we could be fixed.

I turned away so I didn’t have to look at him anymore. It was a moment of weakness, right? That’s only what it was that made me want to grab him, pull him close, and tell him I’d never leave him.

“Thanks for fixing the locks,” I said without turning around to face him. Then I hurried down the hall and hid in my room like a coward.

Chapter Seventeen

Saidy

Two days later, I went outside to find that my car was up on jacks in my driveway.

Two booted feet stuck out from the bottom.

I bent down and looked underneath. Fletcher was tampering with something. “What are you doing to my car?”

“Just changing the oil real quick.”

“I have to be somewhere in an hour. Why are you taking apart my car?”

I watched as he scooted out from under my car, His white t-shirt riding up as he did. Hard ab muscles peeked out at me. If he was going to show me, I was going to look.

His hands were covered in grease, and his hat was on backwards. He reached up to brush a lock of hair off his forehead as he sat up. He left a black streak on his forehead.

“I’m finished. I knew you’d have a lot going on this week. I thought I’d be done before you came out today.”

I flipped open my purse and grabbed a baby wipe out of it. I bent down and scrubbed the greasy spot off of his forehead. “Fletcher, I would have taken care of it. It was on my list to make an appointment at the shop in town.”

His eyes closed briefly as I scrubbed another little grease spot on his cheek. “I know, but they cross-threaded the filter last time. I don’t want them to screw you over.”

“Then I’ll start taking it somewhere else. That sound fair?”

He nodded and flipped onto his hands and knees, messing with the jack holding up the car. It was a nice view. “I didn’t want anything to cause car trouble for you.”

He stood up and I pulled out my stain-remover spray from my purse.

I grabbed the hem of his shirt, my fingers grazing the bare skin of his hard abs.

“If you wanted me to be shirtless, you could have just asked.” He grinned. He reached down to pull his shirt off. I swatted his hands away. I sprayed the stain remover on the grease spot, then scrubbed at it with the baby wipe, my mind flashing back to the first time I’d cleaned a stain off of one of his shirts. “This is going to have to soak for a while, or it will be permanently stained.”

The mixture of oil and cologne drifted toward me as I scrubbed furiously. It was a heady combination. Not one I’d ever thought would make a man appealing. He looked like a grease monkey, and all I wanted to do was grab his face and pull him down to kiss him.

I risked a glance at him. His hooded eyes showed me he was thinking the exact same thing. I released his shirt abruptly, causing him to take a quick step to catch his balance.

He cleared his throat and spun his hat around. “I’ll get this off the blocks and you’ll be ready to go in a minute.”

I nodded. “Thank you. I don’t want to be late.”

“What are you working on today?” he asked as he lifted the blocks from beneath my car and then lowered it with the jack.

“I’m going to The Barre.”

His head jerked to the side. “You mean a bar? You don’t like bars. Which one?” He glared at me over his shoulder as he folded the jack.

“The Barre. And why can’t I decide to go to a bar if I wanted to?” I stomped past him and opened my driver’s side door.

“Listen, Saidy, I know I sound like a jerk, but The