Free Bad Boy - A Stepbrother Romance by Caitlin Daire, Alyssa Alpha Page B

will have to manually make it move again.”
    “Can you do that?”
    “No, has to be from the outside.”
    She sighed again, groaning once she realized we were at the mercy of the always-busy staff in the hospital. I noticed she was shivering as well, which made sense. It was freezing in this elevator. Feeling like a prick for not noticing how cold she was sooner, I slid off my hoodie and passed it to her.
    She gave me a quizzical look, and I shrugged. “Aren’t you cold?” I asked.
    She nodded, offering me a small smile as she took my hoodie and put it on. “Thanks, Finn,” she said in a soft voice, averting her eyes from mine.
    The hoodie was enormous on her, almost reaching down to her knees, and seeing that made my lips quirk up in a grin.  For a few moments, we waited in silence, but there was a nagging question in the forefront of my mind which annoyed me more and more with each passing second.
    I needed to know the answer.
    “Is it so bad being stuck in here with me? I mean, I know you think I’m a dirty liar, and maybe I am, but is it really that bad?” I asked. When Rory didn’t answer right away, I perked up, thinking of a game to play with her while we were waiting for the repairman to get us out of here. “Tell me three people who would be better company than me in a stuck elevator.”
    She shot me another annoyed look, but I could see a hint of a smile on her face. “Donald Trump,” she finally said.
    I gasped in mock outrage. “You cannot be serious,” I said, a hand fluttering to my chest as I sighed dramatically. “You’d be stuck here tending to his wig and listening to a political rant. Give me someone else. You can do better than that.”
    “Err...” She was thinking hard now, and I was happy I’d managed to distract her.
    I knew people tended to get nervous and claustrophobic in situations like this, and I wanted Rory to stay calm. If joking around was the way to do that, I was willing to swallow my pride and make fun of myself.
    As long as she felt safe.
    “Britney Spears,” she finally admitted, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “Circa 2007.”
    “What?!” My voice was appropriately horrified as I glared at her. “You’re saying you’d rather be stuck in here with a derailed pop princess suffering a breakdown than with me?”
    “Definitely,” she said with a grin. By now she was having fun with the little game we were playing, and all traces of her nervousness were long gone. “At least she’d entertain me by singing her greatest hits.”
    “Oh, I do believe that is a challenge.”
    My eyebrows shot up as I looked at her, and Rory groaned, knowing what was coming next. “Please, Finn, no…”
    “OOPS!” I yelled at the top of my lungs and dramatically pulled her closer. She laughed, shaking her head. “I did it again…got lost in the game!”
    I nudged Rory and she smiled at me, the cutest thing in the world. I winked, getting on with the song and shaking my ass as I sang the lyrics. Pretty soon, I had her doubled over with laughter and slowly joining in for the chorus.
    “Oh baby, baby!” she sang, shaking her ass. Obviously, my eyes were glued to her behind at this point, and she caught me looking and blushed a deep shade of red. She didn’t scold me like I expected she would; instead she just kept laughing and singing into her invisible microphone.
    It was probably the most ridiculous thing that could’ve happened in a broken down hospital elevator, but at least it got rid of the awkward tension between us. By the time we hit Lucky and were through Toxic and Work It, we were both laughing our asses off.
    “You’re totally the next Britney,” Rory said, wiping tears of mirth from her eyes.
    “Thank you,” I replied with a grin, which I followed up with a regretful expression. “They said that on X Factor as well, but even though I slept with Simon, I never had my big break.”
    Rory laughed again, doing that adorable thing where she snorted, and I