Not in Love (Not in Love, #1)

by Ali Hazelwood

“Here I am, trying to help you out in a difficult situation, and you repay me by being surprised that I can read.”

She took a step back. Eli was entranced. Her servant. Spellbound. He considered begging her to let him touch her. To let him go down on her here in the hallway. He would go grocery shopping and make her dinner off a YouTube recipe of her choice. He’d wash her car, read her a book, sit here outside her door and just make sure she was safe and protected. They could hold hands all night. They could play Scrabble. He was very close to imploring for something, everything, anything, when she added, “And sometimes the reason is that they should be broken.”

While he’d been drowning in her, busy unspooling the filthiest of thoughts, she must have been at work, because there were ten digits written on his palm—just enough for a phone number. And underneath, three letters that knocked the breath out of his chest. Rue.

I was forgetting something, like starting a new book before finishing the one already checked out from the library—something truncated that wouldn’t allow me to move on yet.

“Fair warning: if you don’t stop pushing me, I’m going to bend you over this bench and show you exactly what I’m into.”

But I loved the way Eli looked at me like I was something special, something more. Like I could easily exhaust the entire spectrum of his needs. Like he couldn’t imagine looking anywhere else, ever.