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I cross my arms. “Oh does it?”

He slants against the door. “It does.”

He’s standing beneath the fluorescent lights, all smiles and bright blue eyes and I can feel that my own mouth is mirroring his. It’s been a long time since I’ve smiled this much, but that doesn’t mean I want to act on it, at least as anything more than friends. I’m unsure what his angle is, with how much he’s flirting with me. But he does seem like the kind of guy that’s a natural flirter.

“As friends?” I decide to ask.

His brows knit. “I’m not sure if I followed you on that one.”

I tug my elastic out of my ponytail and begin pulling my hair into a messy bun. “I mean I’ll go to your get together as your friend.” I watch his expression, trying to decipher what he wants—why he’s talking to me at all.

I can tell he’s throwing the idea around in his head, which means he might have been thinking about this—whatever this new thing is between us—differently than I am.

“Yeah, sure, as friends.” He smiles.

“Cool. Then I’ll be there.” I start to turn away.

“Harper?” he calls out.

I twist back around, and he steps into the building.

“We should trade phone numbers,” he says as he approaches me. “So I can text you info on the get together.”

“Okay, yeah. Good idea..” I pull my phone out of my armband while he sticks his hand into his pocket.

“Shit,” he mutters. “I forgot I don’t have my phone.”

“That’s okay.” I swipe my finger across the screen to unlock it. “Just give me yours and I’ll text you so you have mine.”

For some weird reason, he hesitates. Then his gaze travels to a sitting area that’s beside us. A few women are lounging on the sofas with books and laptops surrounding them.

“Hold on.” He holds up a finger then strolls over to the women. He says something to the one sitting on the sofa.

She has blonde hair that’s braided and she smiles at Wylder as she replies to whatever he says. Then she hands him something—maybe a marker or a pen—I can’t tell. After that, he returns to me.

“Here. Write your phone number on my arm.” He hands me a marker.

I take it with my brows lifted. “What? Do you not trust me to text you my number?”

“I’m just covering all of my bases,” he insists with a smile. “Just in case.”

Smiling and shaking my head, I pull the cap off the marker and take hold of his arm. Before I write down my digits, I say, “You know this is permanent, right?”

“It’ll come off eventually.”

“It’ll take a while, though.”

“I’m fine with that.”

And that’s when something happens that makes me slightly uncomfortable, this fluttering sensation in my stomach. I haven’t felt that in a while, and I do my best to ignore it. I find a spot on his arm that’s inkless. He has a lot of tattoos, but I manage to spot bare unlinked skin on his wrist.

“You have a lot of tattoos,” I remark, scrawling my phone number on his arm.

“I like getting them, but I probably wouldn’t get them so much if one of my sisters wasn’t a tattoo artist.”

I admire the artwork shading his flesh, the intricate shades and flawless designs. “She’s good—you’re sister, I mean.”

“She is. She won all these awards in high school for her artwork, and even got a scholarship, but she ended up wanting to stay in my hometown and open up her own shop.”