Now and Then Read Free Page A

he wasn’t too proud of. Because this girl also looked sweet.
    “Sorry to bother you.”
    And she’s talking to you, numbnuts. Don’t fuck this up!
    “No, no. You’re fine,” he assured her, shooting to his feet and giving her a smile he could only hope came across as chill and not all overeager asshole. “Go ahead.”
    “Right, so I was on this freshman orientation tour and we were in the athletic center when I guess I got distracted, and next thing I’m looking around and realize I have no idea where my group is. I thought maybe you saw them come through this way. There were like fifty people.”
    Man, he wanted to be her hero. Bad. But the flat-out truth of it was, there could have been a marching band rolling through and chances were he wouldn’t have noticed. When he got his head into something, the rest of the world kind of fell away. It drove his sister nuts. Okay, it drove everybody nuts. Still, maybe he could help, because not only was this girl about the prettiest thing he’d ever seen, but she was standing in front of him wringing her fingers like she actually believed missing her orientation tour mattered.
    Cute. And appealing, because he liked girls who took things seriously. Even if it was just a tour of their new campus.
    “Sorry. I was distracted myself,” he said, showing her the design he’d been sketching before he’d remembered not to advertise what a top-tier nerd he was.
    The girl’s brows arched and then she took a step closer, reaching for the side of his notebook as though she thought he’d pull it away before she was ready to give it up. Not likely.
    “Are you an art student? I was thinking basketball with the height and you sitting on the steps here,” she said, nodding to the athletic center behind him. “But then I guess you’re both?”
    He let out a laugh, because everyone thought he played basketball. “Neither, actually. I mean beyond shooting hoops with the guys once in a while, I don’t play for the school. Just watch. Avid fan. And the sketch is for a game I’m designing. I’m a Business and Computer Science guy.”
    “A game? Wow, that’s—that’s so crazy cool,” she exclaimed, sounding like she actually meant it.
    “You a gamer?” he asked, not daring to hope. “Have a favorite?”
    She shook her head. “Sorry, when it comes to games, I’m more of a sports fanatic. Football, basketball, hockey, baseball, soccer, hell—” Her cheeks turned pink and she gave her head a small shake. “Heck, I’ll even watch golf.”
    His throat went dry, because next to girls who loved gaming, girls who loved sports were about as hot as it got. And seriously, a guy couldn’t ask for everything.
    A breeze drifted through, catching a few soft spirals of that pretty red. Absently, she tucked them behind her ear and squinted up at him, her smile all but eclipsing the sun and doing something to the center of his chest he’d never felt before.
    “Don’t get me wrong, I like video games,” she added ruefully. “But aside from the sports ones I’m a bigger fan of the old stuff than the new. Put Donkey Kong in front of me and I’ll be there until next week!”
    Ford swallowed. Hard. Because, hello, girl he was going to marry.
    But rather than get down on his knee right then and ask, he rubbed at the back of his neck and offered, “How about I take you back over to the administration building where the tour started and if we can’t meet up with them, I’ll show you around myself.”

Chapter 3
    Brynn was breathless, her lashes wet from tears of laughter, and that seldom used place in the center of her chest aching for all the things it couldn’t have. She’d ordered a second beer, or a third counting the one she’d had before seeing Ford, but it remained largely untouched thanks to the way the conversation kept rolling between them. They’d talked and joked, finding humor in those few shared months together without dredging up the crummy ending to their story.