With Any Luck (The Improbable Meet-Cute, #5)

by Ashley Poston

“I’m not, but you are.” He had flashed a catty grin up at me. “And I can tell you want me to kiss you.” I had. So, so badly. So badly, I kept thinking about what that mouth of his tasted like . . . Did it taste like the drinks he had, or the spearmint gum in his back pocket? Were his lips as soft as they looked? Did he bite? I pulled myself out of the memory and averted my eyes to my shoes. “What are you doing here?” Those green eyes turned playful. “I’m here to kiss you.”

“Why do I frighten you?” “Because you make me wonder what else I’ve been missing, closed off in my studio with my sculptures and my clay. Millie is my constant—was my constant,” he corrects himself. “She made sure I was fed and watered; she made sure I had friends—that I socialized. People don’t really interest me. I don’t understand their jokes, I’m often too blunt, I come off as crass. So many people have come in and out of my life, but Millie? She stayed. I want her to be happy, but to do that, I have to let her go. Things have to change. And I’m scared of that.”

“Sometimes when you love someone, you both have to do shit you don’t want to.”

“I wasn’t joking yesterday when I asked you to kiss me.” My bottom lip wobbled. “So you can find your t-true love, too?” “Fuck that,” he growled and took my face in his hands and kissed me. Crushed our mouths together, our breaths intertwining in the cold.

“What made you change your mind?” I asked. “About kissing me?” He felt so hard against my middle, and I hadn’t had anything intimate in so long I wanted it. So, so badly. “Because it’d be you,” he said. “I knew it’d be you.”