Page 68 of Almost Ours

“I didn’t realise I was looking at you any kind of way.” I lift my chin a bit. “Maybe it’s because you’ve just called me insane.”

It's at this moment I realise Josh isn't just physically hot. He's also temperature hot. Genuinely roasting—heat is radiating through his black bomber jacket and straight into me, as if he's running on a higher setting than the rest of us.

His chest is solid and broad, and his hands on my waist are warm, and I suddenly understand why Victorian women were always fainting.

Is this what swooning is? Because my legs are definitely considering it.

“You alright?” he asks, his eyebrows pulling together.

“Yep.”

“You look a bit weird.”

“Thank you.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“No, carry on. First insane, now weird. Really building me back up after that fiasco.”

That gets a laugh out of him, and because I’m still pressed right up against him, I feel the movement of it through his chest before I properly hear it.

Oh, fuck off.

I need to get a grip.

Loosening my arms from around his shoulders, I am overtly conscious of all the ways we’re touching, but when I try to put my weight onto my feet, a bolt of pins and needles shoots down my left leg and I grab him again. “Ow—shit.”

Josh’s hands go tighter around my waist. “What?”

“My leg.” I grimace, lifting my heel slightly off the ground. “It’s waking back up.”

“Not dead then?”

“Not far off.”

He looks down, checking me over, and I use the opportunity to inspect him without being caught doing it. His hair is darker in the alley than it is under the lights inside, his jaw shadowed slightly from the end of the day, and there’s a tiny mark near his chin where one of my stupid bunny ears must have caught him when I fell.

“Oh, shit. I did actually hit you.”

His green eyes come back to mine. “Yeah.”

“Sorry.”

“S’okay,” he shrugs, not breaking eye contact. “I’ll survive.”

“Are you sure? I’m apparently capable of breaking buildings with my bum.”

“I’m fine. Though I’ve no idea how I’ll ever explain this to your brother.”

I groan at the thought. “Oscar can never know about this.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ll hear about it forever. He still brings up the time how I rode my bike straight into a wall.”

Josh studies me. “Why’d you ride it into a wall?”

“It wasn’t intentional. I’d never ridden a bike before. It was my first go and I didn’t know how to turn.” I grimace. “Oscar says I just kept pedalling right up until I hit it, then slid down the wall like a cartoon character.”