Read Camouflaged (Hiding From Love #0.5) for Free Online Page B

when I tracked him down, I found out he’d fathered two other kids with two other women after my mom, and he’d left all of them too. That’s who I come from. If you’re looking for a good time, give me a call. If you’re looking for a good guy, keep on walking.”
    The small space we occupied seemed to become larger and larger as I felt Alexis withdraw, trying to get as far from me as she could. I didn’t blame her.
    Then without any warning, she stepped forward, bringing her into full contact with me, toe to chest. She was warm, and I felt her soft breasts give way against my chest as she stood on her tiptoes. She reached up and put her hand along my cheek, the stubble there making a rasping noise against her palm.
    Her lips parted, and for a minute, I thought she was going to kiss me. I felt my breath hitch with the anticipation, and my hands automatically went to her hips. I looked down at her, trying to decipher what was going through her mind.
    “Don’t do that to yourself,” she said fiercely as she rubbed her thumb across my lips. “Don’t make what he did your sin. You’re smart and healthy and young. You can be anyone you want. You could have been fathered by the devil himself and it wouldn’t matter. Be you, but be the best you, not some bad rendition of him .”
    She licked her lips, and we froze for a moment that seemed to carry on for hours. Finally, she stepped back, taking her hand off my face, and it was like I’d surfaced from being underwater. The sounds around me rushed back in as if I’d been deaf and could now hear. The tightness of the space was overwhelming and I felt my heart pull inside my chest until it physically ached. I swallowed, trying to overcome the sensation, but it lodged there like a burning lump of coal.
    I unconsciously put my fist up to my chest, wondering how I was supposed to do anything with that pain there. Alexis continued staring at me with her luminous eyes. All at once, I blinked, and she dropped her gaze.
    I said, “I’d better check how everything looks at the street.” And I left.

    Alexis and I tried to get back to being business-like over the next few days. I helped her as she took her turns with inventory and did more surveying. I walked her to and from all her meals and even played a few rounds of Monopoly with her and the other UN volunteers. Her buddy Steve kept me under his evil eye whenever he was around, but Alexis and I were so formal with each other he couldn’t find anything to tattle about.
    The pain in my chest persisted though. Her words came to me at night when I was in my cot, trying unsuccessfully to go to sleep. Why this girl had gotten to me like that, had gotten me like that, I couldn’t figure out. She was a girl. An ordinary American girl. Only she wasn’t, and deep down I knew it.
    At the end of the second week of the UN’s tour, Alexis and I were walking back to her tent after dinner when I decided I wanted to figure out who she really was. I needed to understand her.
    “So, did you grow up in Austin?” I asked as we strolled slowly through camp in the dwindling light.
    “No, a little town to the south called San Marcos.”
    “And both your parents lived with you?” I watched her profile as we moved along side by side in an easy rhythm.
    “Yeah. My parents were both born in Mexico but grew up in Texas. They’re still kind of old fashioned, you know? Catholic and all that. Family’s everything in that world.”
    “Catholic. So you probably have a bunch of brothers and sisters?”
    She laughed. “Four. But you know, I don’t believe for a second that my parents didn’t use any birth control all those years. I mean, really, only five kids? As much as it grosses me out to think about them having sex, I hope they were having it more than that.”
    Somehow the word “sex” coming out of Alexis’s mouth was more than I’d bargained for with this conversation. I took a deep breath. trying to ease the images that popped