Page 37 of Indebted

I kept my thoughts to myself and instead busied my hands with the container of soup. This was definitely better than the canned soup I would’ve gotten at the store. The vegetables looked fresh, the noodles were thick cut, and the chicken wasn’t squished into cubes.

A spoon appeared in front of my face.

Justin stood over me, napkins in one hand, spoon in the other. His towering frame made me feel even more fragile sitting in my bed.

“Thanks,” I mumbled and took the spoon. He stayed where he was while I took a few mouthfuls. The warm liquid soothed my throat and my stomach instantly felt better. It had started to cramp from lack of food. “You don’t have to stay and look after me,” I said when I couldn’t stand the quiet that settled over us.

He ignored me.

Not surprising.

What was surprising was the two pills he held out to me, along with an opened bottle of orange juice. “Here. Take this.”

I held my tongue about calling him a mother hen. Who knew?

Once the pills were washed down, I opened my mouth and lifted my tongue as if needing an inspection just to screw with him and his overbearingness. “Satisfied?”

He crossed his arms over his wide chest. “Hardly.”

I cleared my throat. Can’t say I didn’t walk into that one. “Are you going to stand there the whole time?”

“Are you offering me a place to sit?”

Despite my better judgement, I patted the empty space next to me.

Chapter 13

Something told me Justin wanted to make sure I ate my soup and drank my juice. I didn’t have enough fight in me to resist this sudden wave of whatever it was that’d come over him.

Granted, I didn’t want to examine it too closely either.

Justin came around the other side of my bed, bypassing my desk. He paused, before picking up my laptop and joining me.

I kept my attention focused on the soup in my lap and not on the way my bed dipped when he got on, or the fact that he took his shoes off and wore adorable socks with cartoon seagulls on them.

Our shoulders bumped and the heat of his body had me flush all over.

I didn’t know what it was about Justin. I’d communicated with plenty of men in my life. Being a computer major meant my classes were not lacking in the male student department. I’d sat next to numerous guys from school, plenty of them attractive. But I’d never felt this draw before. The foreign hollowing out in my stomach when Justin was near. The way I seemed to count the minutes until I would see him again.

It didn’t make sense. And I hated things that didn’t make sense.

Lost in my thoughts, Justin took it upon himself to open my laptop and boot it up.

“Password?” he asked, hands already on my keyboard.

I couldn’t help but fixate on them. Now I’d always remember the way they looked over my backlit keyboard. “Give it here,” I started to put my soup down.

His hand on my arm stopped me dead. “You need to eat, I’m not going to sell your password on the internet, Katie. What is it?”

“It’ll only take a second for me to type in.”

His fingers pressed more firmly against my forearm.

We stared at each other, his body too close for comfort. I tried to communicate with my eyes that there was no way in hell I was giving him my password, but every non-verbal barb I threw at him seemed to bounce off his impenetrable exterior.

I huffed out a breath and told him the sequence of numbers and letters.

It didn’t take long for my computer to start up. Justin watched every program that popped up, his eyes scanning the documents I had saved to my desktop. He was so focused that for a second, I questioned if I had anything incriminating on there.