Free Honeytrap by CRYSTAL GREEN Page B

scampered ahead of us, but Micah only grinned and looked down at me again.
    â€œIs that what this town is saying?” he asked. “As I told you before, Shelby, you listen to them too much.”
    I ignored his misdirection, even though he was right. “Do I have it wrong?”
    â€œNo.”
    His bluntness nearly made me blink, but I kept eye contact, right along with the space I was maintaining between us—him a few feet away, me another. Even then, I could still smell that laundry soap, his skin, that mysterious
something
.
    â€œJeez,” I said. “Seriously? You’re actually admitting you made a bet about ‘nailing’ me?”
    â€œWhy wouldn’t I admit it?”
    â€œBecause if I know you’re out to get me, you kind of lose the element of surprise.”
    â€œI don’t need surprise.”
    Whoosh
—that was the air escaping me again. He had a bad habit of leaving me that way. And when he took me into his sights with those dazzling gray—or were they light blue or green?—eyes, I was really trapped.
    He lowered his voice, although Evie could probably still hear us from ten feet away as she got closer to the pickup.
    â€œYou’re gonna change your mind about me, Shelby, even if it takes all summer.”
    â€œHow about I save you some time and tell you it’s not happening? There’re a lot of other catches out there, like the bandana girl who started the race. Stalk
her
.”
    â€œAmber? She likes any guy with a souped-up ride.”
    â€œAnd you’ve slept with her, I imagine.” Did that really just come out of my mouth?
    His silence shouted a clear “Yes, I did bang her.” For some dumb reason, that made my jaw clench.
    Remember, Shelby
, I told myself,
you don’t need to be needy.
Not like you were with Rex
.
    So why was I all about need right now? Needing him to touch me so I could feel what it’d be like. Needing him to look at me again so I could revel in adrenaline and hormones and everything I’d been missing since I’d been banished to a she’s-such-a-psycho hole.
    â€œDon’t mind my saying so,” he whispered so Evie couldn’t hear, “but why would you care about Amber if I didn’t have a chance with you?”
    â€œI
don’t
care.”
    â€œWhatever you say.”
    He kept smiling to himself, like everything was going exactly according to plan.
    â€œOut of curiosity,” I said, “what did you bet your cousins? Money?”
    â€œA stake in the shop.”
    Now I did do a double take. Luckily, Evie was already at my pickup, her head down as she shut herself inside. The slam of the door consumed the night, silence all around us, just as heavy as the tension.
    He laughed, low and smooth. “Pretty high stakes, huh? You should feel good about that.”
    â€œThat you want to make me into a notch on your bedpost? That’s a weird way of looking at things.”
    He leaned his head back, keeping his gaze on me. Somehow, that made him a different kind of intense, his smile all but disappearing.
    â€œI suppose I do have a weird way about me,” he said, tucking his hands under his armpits, his stance of choice. “When you’ve been bounced around as much as I have, your perception becomes . . . altered from everyone else’s. It becomes your very own. I don’t see things through the eyes of Aidan Falls like most everyone else around here does. I don’t see heroes in douchebags like Rex. I imagine I don’t even see what you see.”
    I absorbed that, but I still had my questions. “Did you have a bet about Jadyn Dandritch, too?”
    â€œNo.”
    Once again, his quick honesty startled me. So did the rest of what he had to say.
    â€œJadyn and I innocently met at a kegger a couple weekends ago. We got along, and it went from there, even if she had a