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I was so fucked.
Mandy and Jackson stopped in their tracks once they’d realized I saw her. I pushed past them, every part of my body acting on its own accord, that invisible string wrapping itself around me and drawing me toward her. She toyed with her bottom lip, holding it between her thumb and middle finger as she looked at one of the paintings up for auction.
“Ray,” I breathed.
Her fingers stilled as I approached. She blinked, her eyes frozen on the painting.
“Ray,” I said again, forcing my voice to sound as normal as I could manage.
She turned her head slowly, giving me her profile and looking at me from the corner of her eye. “Hi, Wade.”
A handful of people passed us, glasses of wine in their grip as they laughed and joked with one another. I wanted to feel like they did, wanted to enjoy myself with her. But there was tension between us, an unspoken uncertainty for us both.
“Were you out of the loop too or was I the only one they didn’t tell?” I asked. It was as good an icebreaker as any.
Her body turned to me, her eyes finally meeting mine. She searched them for answers, a silence falling over us before she allowed her lips to turn upward into a grin. “They didn’t tell you I’d be here?”
A chuckle crept up my throat. “No,” I returned the grin. “They didn’t.”
“Mandy tried to tell me it would be a blind date,” she said. Her eyes rolled, contrasting the slight smile that stayed on her lips. “She didn’t fool me at all.”
“Why am I not surprised?” I laughed. I resisted the urge to reach out and touch her, to grab her by the waist and pull her to me. There was still a part of me that wasn’t sure what to believe, though, and I imagined she felt the same. “I have a proposition for you.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Please don’t tell me you’re going to ask me to be your fake girlfriend again.”
“No, I’m not,” I assured her. “Why don’t we just… start over? We could pretend like this really is a blind date. You don’t know me, I don’t know you. We’re meeting for the first time.”
She sighed as she crossed her arms, her gaze flicking somewhere behind me to what I could only assume was Jack and Mandy gossiping to each other like teenagers. “I… don’t know if I can do that.”
And there it was. Ice Bunny’s walls were back up.
“We can try,” I said.
Her lips pressed together into a thin line. “We can try.”
————
If only things could go so smoothly every day with her.
For a few hours, we managed to jive fairly well. We sat around the table, chatting lazily with Mandy and Jack, and enjoying dinner. Sure, there’d been a few hiccups, a few winces, a few derogatory words tossed around. But for the most part, we’d gotten along.
“I don’t like this guy,” Ray whispered to me, a scowl on her face as she listened to the man at the front speak. He was giving a speech about the state of Alzheimer’s and dementia patients under the state's care. “He’s talking about them like they’re children. They’re still people.”
“That tends to be the norm with most of these events, unfortunately,” I whispered back. “Most of the speakers have zero experience with the people they’re claiming to support.”
“Oh, shit,” Mandy suddenly mumbled from beside me, her gaze snagging on something—someone—entering through the main entrance. I turned my head to look.
Oh, shit, was right.
Ray followed our gaze and stood, heading toward him. Had this been weeks ago, I wouldn’t have thought much about it. Sure, jealousy would have bloomed like it did at the wedding, but not like this. Not the fire that ignited within a second of my eyes landing on Hunter Harris.
Ray’s body pushed through the sea of people. One by one, they moved for her, allowing my Raven to go toward the one person who’d caused so much damage between Ray and me.
I followed her.
The closer I got, the more I could hear them chatting as they moved toward the back doors. Ray laughed at a joke I couldn’t quite make out, her smile beaming more than it had with me in the last hour.
“This is why we need to petition for free home medical supplies for the patients affected by these horrible diseases,” the man on the stage droned. The crowd clapped for him.
