Free Something to Believe In (The Renegade Saints Book 4) by Ella Fox Page B

thoughtfully. “I never would’ve guessed.”
    I had the crazy urge to ask if I could color with her. Even though I wanted to stay, I quickly squashed the idea. She needed to see I was being sincere. If I asked to hang with her in her room right then, she’d have thought I just wanted to fuck. Which, honestly, I did. But I also wanted something more.
    “I’ll leave you to it then,” I said as I stepped back. “We’re going to have fun together like normal people. Get excited because I’m pretty fucking awesome,” I boasted.
    She arched her eyebrow and cocked her head. “You’ve got your work cut out for you since to this point you’ve been awesomely awful. I’m looking forward to seeing the other side of you. Every person who’s part of this tour raves about what a great guy you are. It’ll be nice to see that.”
    “Oh, you’ll be seeing it,” I teased.
    I damn near groaned when she smiled up at me hopefully. She was stunning.
    “I’m counting on it,” she murmured.
    Knowing I’d dodged a major bullet by getting her to forgive me, I decided to leave while I was ahead.
    “Cool. I’m going to head up to my room then. I’ll see you… soon.”
    “No,” she disagreed.
    I cocked my head to the side, confused.
    “You won’t just see me soon,” she chided. “You’ll see me tomorrow when I knock on the door with the daily brief and you will be happy to see me.”
    I laughed as I stared down at her. “I’ll be more than happy to see you,” I assured her.
    She grinned. “See you tomorrow.”
    “Tomorrow,” I confirmed. “Have a good night.”

 
    I barely slept a wink. I couldn’t believe Tyson had admitted to liking me and had opened the door to something happening between us. Half of me was giddy, while the other half was scared shitless he’d revert to form at some point. I lit up inside when he was around and I wanted nothing more than for him to thaw around me permanently. I kept my fingers crossed but repeatedly told myself to hope for the best, while being prepared for the worst.
    My first order of business upon closing the door when he left was to open my laptop to write a long email to Violet. I told her everything—from the bathroom to his apology and everything in between. I knew she’d give it to me straight, and I was very interested in her take.
    When I got up the next morning, I had a response email from her. It was full of exclamation points because she was so excited.
    “I so totally knew you liked him,” she wrote.
    I grinned like a fool as I wrote her back and told her I more than liked him, but I was scared to hope he’d really turned the corner. She texted me and said to have a little faith, but to keep my guard up until I felt confident.
    True to his word when I knocked on his door he opened it with a welcoming smile.
    “Good afternoon, Daisy,” he said cheerfully as he took the brief from me.
    Like a fool, I focused on his mouth as he spoke. The man had lips to die for and staring at them set me back to the bathroom incident. The sensory memory hit me like a wave. He’d kissed me so stupid I was still reacting.
    “Daisy?”
    I knew my face was beet red as my eyes darted up and met his. I shifted nervously as I stared at him.
    “Sorry,” I mumbled. “I just remembered I have a call to make about…”
    I trailed off, unable to pull something out of my brain. Dammit, I needed to learn to come up with stuff on the fly. I desperately tried to think of a call I needed to make. Certainly I knew I had things to do, but in the moment I couldn’t remember even one.
    “About?”
    “Drumsticks,” I blurted. “Gavin doesn’t like the weight of the sticks from his new shipment so I need to call the company and have them replaced. I was just working out in my head how to explain it all to the manufacturer. You know how it is.”
    The corner of his mouth quirked into a half grin. “Yep, I know what’s up.”
    I was positive he didn’t buy my excuse, which meant he