Page 48 of Came the Closest
“Don’t blink,” Indi taunts from where she sits next to me. “If this ends in a tie, I get to pick the flavor.”
“Nuh-uh!” Milo exclaims, sitting up on his knees. “I didn’t say that!”
I would tell her a staring contest can’t end in a tie, but my eyes are watering. If I do anything but concentrate on Colton, I will blink. It’s not a question, it’s a guarantee. I fight a laugh when Colton mocks a yawn, his gaze never leaving mine.
Do. Not. Blink.
Through bleary eyes, I study the way Colton’s eyelashes have started turning golden brown from the early summer sun. When light slants into them just right, his irises reflect lighter—almost like being under water and looking up, sunlight filtering through frothy blue waves. I note the small, pale scar an inch to the left of his full lips and remember the way his hands would tighten reflexively on my waist when I kissed it. What it felt like to run my hands over his muscled torso and—
Wait, what? I fight the urge to blink and swallow instead. That escalated quickly.
I jerk my gaze back to his. Lazy amusement creases his expression, like he knows exactly where my thoughts just went. I do not have a poker face, and if I did, it wouldn’t matter. Colton has always been able to see through my BS like it’s glass held up to light. I don’t think that’s changed because of our distance in the last five years.
“Did you know,” Indi says, “that if you go too long without blinking, your eyes will get stuck like that?”
Milo gasps. “They will?”
“No.” Indi reaches for her glass—water, no ice, no lemon. I see it in my periphery and become all too aware of my own dry mouth. “But they don’t need to know that.”
Milo laughs, and Colton says, “We can still hear you, Blue. Even if my eyes are too glazed over to see.”
“Mm, yes,” Indi says, tapping a finger to her lips. “That’s one of the first symptoms of open-eye-itis.”
“Annie, you gots ta blink!” Milo tugs on my arm insistently. “Your eyes will freeze open!”
“Hey,” Colton says indignantly. “What about me?”
Milo smiles impishly. “Annie’s prettier than you, and more funner too.”
Indi snorts.
Colton hums. “I don’t know about the funner part, but yeah. She’s definitely prettier than me.”
My cheeks warm. Partly from Colton’s unwavering, blurry gaze, and partly from his comment. I’d blame it on the sun, but it’s to my back. It has also inconveniently dipped behind a cloud at the moment. Which means my flush has everything to do with Colton.
“She blinked!” Indi says triumphantly.
Shoot.
One flirty comment—if it can be called that, considering it was originally from Milo—and my whole mind derails. Worse yet, I didn’t even realize I had blinked. I’m beginning to think there are side effects to Colton’s nearness. One of them is happiness. It feels simultaneously foreign and natural, the way he brings a smile to my face before I’ve realized it’s happening.
It's unnerving.
It’s beautiful.
“To be fair,” I say after blinking thirty more times, “he knew I didn’t stand a chance. I have never won a staring contest with Colton.”
Not today, and not the dozens of times my brothers dared us to one over the kitchen table at the lake house.
Indi eyes her older brother skeptically. “Did you cheat?”
“No,” he says, looking adorably offended by the mere idea of cheating.
“Nudging someone under the table counts,” Indi tells him. “And so does talking. You—” she points for emphasis, as if we might think she’s talking about the balding man behind him instead “—were talking.” She gasps, and her attention flits to Milo. “Did he pay you?”
“No,” Colton says again. “I would never.”
Indi opens her mouth, but it snaps shut when her gaze lands on something behind Colton. Someone, I realize when I lean slightly to the left. A tall, dark, handsome someone wearing a crisp navy suit, gold-rimmed aviator sunglasses, and his own brand of confidence that makes Indi look positively ticked.