Chasing His Kickass Luna Back novel Chapter 279

Abby

My hands tremble slightly as I reach the door, my thoughts racing a mile a minute.

The apartment still looks like a hurricane just blew through, the ingredients aren’t prepped, I’m still a mess myself, and the judges are an hour and a half early. Great. Just great.

I hope that whoever shoved those paper towels and cardboard down my sink are happy with themselves. And if it was no one, and it was just a freak accident of some sort, I hope that the universe is having a good laugh over my misfortune.

I take a deep breath, steeling myself for stern faces that I’m about to meet.

But when the door swings open, instead of three judges, I’m met with someone who I never expected.

“K-Karl…?”

He steps inside without a word and holds a bouquet of soaking wet flowers, like they’ve been plucked straight out of a vase, out to me. No, he doesn’t just hold them out to me. He shoves them into my hand.

Our fingers brush, sending an uninvited jolt through my already-electrified body. Silence envelopes us as our eyes meet, and it feels as though times stop.

His eyes are locked with mine, and for an endless second, I’m convinced he’s going to kiss me. But then he steps back, breaking the spell as he looks over the chaos of my apartment.

“Miss me?” he asks, his gaze meeting mine again.

My voice sounds far away, even to my own ears. “What… What are you doing here?”

He scratches the back of his neck, a small smile playing on his lips. “I got your voicemail.”

My eyes widen slightly. “You did?”

He nods. “Yeah. I’m sorry for the late notice, but… I wanted to be here. I went to the restaurant, but it was closed, so I figured you’d be here. How did it go?”

I’m still in shock, my voice coming out with a tremor that can’t be denied no matter how I try to hide it. “It hasn’t happened yet. The restaurant… A pipe burst, and the electricity went out. But I’ll get into that later. The judges are coming here. To this…”

I gesture to the disaster behind me with my free hand, the flowers still clutched in my hand, and it’s now that the embarrassment hits me. My apartment is still a disaster, although slightly less so now than it was before. But it’s still a disaster, the perfect picture of a depressed woman who has gone nothing but wallow for the past three weeks.

My hand falls back to my side. “This… mess.”

Karl laughs, and it sounds more like disbelief than anything else. “Well, lucky for you, I’m here to help.”

Help. That, after everything that’s happened, is the last word I expected to hear uttered from his mouth.

“Help?” I echo, trying to ignore the way my heartbeat quickens. “You really want to help?”

He holds my gaze, steady and sure. “I do.”

I don’t know what to say. After everything, after the way he stormed out when I rejected him, I never expected him to actually come back to help me. Or maybe I did, in my own twisted, selfish sort of way. And here he is, dressed in a tuxedo…