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“Don’t apologize,” he says, his breath hot on my skin. It’s only now that I notice how close our faces are. Mere inches separate us. A dangerous proximity, considering the kind of thoughts I’ve been having about him all night. But it has to be better than having them about Ben. I’ve practically convinced myself of this by now.
“Maybe it was a bad idea to move back here. I thought I wanted to be closer to family, but this…” He shakes his head, unable to finish his thought.
“San Antonio’s a big city. You can still keep your distance from her when you need to.” I almost reach out and touch his arm, like he touched mine, but hesitate at the last moment and let it fall on the bar. “Don’t let her affect your life and how you choose to move forward.”
I lean in closer, in what’s meant to be a conspiratorial manner, but the musky scent of him is intoxicating. One whiff of him, and I’m starting to think I understand how addicts feel. His eyes are so blue, deep indigo pools I could drown in. Nothing like his brother’s hazel ones.
“You know what you need, Theo?”
“What?” He finally looks at me straight on. The weight of his gaze is almost too much to take.
“A rebound!” I announce, index finger poking at his chest until he moves back a few inches. Already, I can breathe easier now that he’s not so close. Maybe if I can convince him to hook up with someone else, I’ll stop thinking about him this way. “Get under a few girls. Or over them. Behind them. Whichever position suits your sensibilities. I’m sure you can manage a few.”
I nudge him with an elbow, as I imagine a wingman would. His eyes widen in surprise, mouth wobbling like he’s holding in a laugh.
“Right.” A smile breaks through, wide and almost comical, if he wasn’t so damn attractive. But then, a distant scream makes him look past my shoulder again. I turn around too. Alice is clapping, head thrown back as a laugh takes over her body. Christine is frowning, eyes narrowing as she looks up at Angela, who is standing up from the table and shouldering her purse. She waves at the group, and when we make eye contact across the bar, she waggles her brows at me.
I don’t have to know the context to know that Angela will always have my back. Whatever she said to Christine had to have been in my defense.
But Theo doesn’t know what I know. He’s agitated all over again, leg shaking against the barstool. His eyes are trained on Alice, her glossy black hair and flushed cheeks. Finally, he turns away with a scowl. “Are they bothering you as much as they’re bothering me right now?”
I shake my head. I’m completely unbothered, but if he is, there might be a way I can help… no matter how bad of an idea it is. But if I can distract him from Alice, even momentarily, I should take one for the team, right? My eyes fall to his full lips, pursed in a frown I suddenly want so badly to undo.
Talk about tequila bringing out bad sides. And we’re not even drunk yet.
“We could always give them what they came here for.”
He looks back down at me. “And what would that be?”
The heat in his gaze tells me he already knows. Or maybe he’s just matching the heat in mine. His eyes flick down, and now we’re both staring at each other’s mouths. My skin flushes, fever hot. He hesitates a beat, and when I flick my eyes back up to his, I find indecision there. It lasts only a moment before heat replaces logic, and then he’s closing the space between us.
He leans forward until our lips crash together, sudden and collapsing. I taste the salt and lime on his tongue as it slides between my teeth, and I wonder distantly if I taste like raspberries. My fingers curl in his hair, soft and fine to the touch. Oh god, this is the best bad idea I’ve had in years.
His big hands wrap around my waist, pulling me flush against his chest, between his spread legs. I tug on his hair, and am rewarded with a low, throaty groan against my lips. The scruff of his cheeks scratches against mine, but it’s not an altogether bad feeling. Our tongues slide together, and the feeling is almost too much. Pleasure pools low in my stomach, so intense I have to squeeze my legs together to keep from pouncing on him this moment, in front of Alice and her friends and everyone else in the bar.
I didn’t expect this. He wasn’t supposed to feel this good. The kiss was supposed to satisfy my curiosity—a one-time kiss to inspire me to move on to other one-time activities. Preferably, with men whose surnames aren’t Young. But now that I know what it’s like to kiss him, it’s all I want to keep doing. It should scare me, but I just want more of him.
He breaks away, eyes hazy, pupils blown so wide I can’t see a single trace of blue. I wonder if I look as wrecked as I feel, as wrecked as he looks right now. If this is all it takes to forget about Ben, why didn’t I start doing this years ago?
I clear my throat, backing away onto my stool. Theo’s hands fall away from my back, the warmth of him immediately cooling with his absence. We’re both breathing hard and staring harder. I don’t think I’m the only one surprised by the intensity between us.
“Well.” I clear my throat again. “That was…” I put a fist to my mouth, laughing at myself. At us. Never mind that nothing about what just happened is funny. Except maybe my audacity.
“Yeah,” he agrees, mouth spreading into a wide grin. His eyes trail past my shoulder, and then he throws back his head and laughs.
“What?” I turn around, and then turn back to him with wide eyes. “Oh my god. They left.”
We burst into hysterics, laughing like complete idiots. He orders another round of shots, and the rest of the night settles into a pattern of order, clink, drink. It’s the distraction I need after the kiss because wow. I have never been kissed like that before. I’m apparently so quick to dive into literally anything else to get my mind off it that I lose count of how many shots we’ve downed, and my vision is far too blurry to count the shot glasses on our side of the bar.
“All right, Ortiz, you know what I have to do.” Krystal holds out her blurry hand expectantly. “Hand it over.”
“If I have to, then so does he.” I throw an arm around Theo’s shoulders. He squints at me as I hold out my other hand. “Phone. You’re as much in danger of drunk dialing as I am.”
“I’m not gonna drunk dial Alice,” he says past a drunken hiccup. When I don’t budge, he heaves a sigh and shoves his iPhone into my hand. Before I hand mine to Krystal, I notice two missed texts from Angela on the lock screen.
Urgh, Christine had the nerve to say she has no idea what Theo sees in you. Y’all might not really be dating, but I set her straight!
You should’ve SEEN the look on her face when I said maybe she should give it up after ten straight years of rejection.
