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“I don’t care,” I say. “I’m happy to see you.”
Tall as he is, he feels small when he looks at me from under his eyelashes. “You are? Even though I almost didn’t come?”
“I was disappointed,” I admit. “I wanted you to see me dance. I still want you to see me dance. But you’re here now. That’s all that matters.”
Am I letting him off easy? Was I too harsh before? My emotions are such a jumble tonight that I’m not sure what’s real and what’s stress or alcohol or just a bad temper. I don’t care, either. All I want is to touch him again, to feel him under my hands, solid and real and within my grasp.
Luke gets even closer, and I can’t resist curling my fingers in his shirt, as though I can hold him here andrefuse to let him run away. For all his talk of being afraid to encounter someone he knows in this club, his eyes focus only on me.
“You look incredible,” he says.
“You should have seen me on stage,” I say. “Way less clothing. This is my casual look.”
“This is casual?”
I grin up at him.
“I really screwed up, huh?” he says.
I nod, even as I bite my lip to keep from smiling too much. “You kind of did.”
“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I’m really sorry, Sebastian. I should have been here. I want to be here. I want to see you dance. I want to dance with you. I want to go to clubs and parks and whatever else you want to go to. I’m trying.”
“I know you are. I do.”
“But it’s too slow?”
I shake my head. “Not if I know you’re trying. Not if I know you’re with me. I can be patient. I just need to know you’ll be here someday.”
“I want to be here now,” Luke says. “I fucked up, but I want to … to not fuck up. I want to stop fucking up. Can I have a chance to stop fucking up?”
He’s so earnest, so sincere, so desperate for my forgiveness, that it makes me regret how angry I let myself get before.
I don’t want to talk about this anymore, so instead of answering him in words, I throw my arms around his neck and answer him with a kiss.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Luke
I’M STILL FLOATING from that kiss when Sebastian starts tugging me onto the dance floor. I guess I have my answer as to whether I’ll get another chance, but I don’t know that I’ve done anything to earn his forgiveness. Maybe both of us don’t care about perfection when it comes to this; maybe both of us want to find a way for this to work, as messy and imperfect as it may be.
Sebastian pulls me into a throng of bodies. It’s like wading into the ocean when you don’t know how to swim. I’m fantastically out of my depth. The crowd, the dancing, the clothing choices — all of it is antithetical to how I’ve lived my whole life. Sebastian is gripping my hand, however, and as long as he has me, I’m not scared of the unknown.
Sebastian stops at some silent cue. He turns toward me, and suddenly we’re hip to hip, the bodies on every side pushing us closer together. Sebastian drapes his arms around my neck like this is a middle school dance and not a pounding nightclub full of leather and fishnet.
“Dance with me,” he says, his words immediately swallowed up by the noise on every side.
I don’t know if I’d call what we’re doing dancing, but I set my hands on his hips and let our bodies tip toward each other as the music and the noise and the bodies push us closer. Sebastian tugs a little, and I bend toward him, my nose nestling into the crook of his neck. Every breath brings me more of him, and combined with the feeling of his whole body against mine, I’m starting to wonder how long I can stay on this dance floor. Not that we’re doing anything the rest of the dance floor isn’t doing. Maybe this is normal here? I certainly wouldn’t know, and it isn’t going to matter much longer as my whole body reacts to him.
Sebastian doesn’t seem to care. Or maybe he wants to show me his dancing skills up close. It’s no secret that he knows how to move. Every beat of the music snakes through his hips and into my hands, echoing in my body. I can imagine how he’d look set loose, but I don’t want to let him go now that I’m here, now that we’re in the thick of it.
Maybe I’ll get another chance.
That thought sends a thrill racing up and down my spine. The idea that there’s time, that I might get anotheropportunity to see him do what he loves, is a potent aphrodisiac. The thought of a future, a future withhim, provides a different sort of allure than what I’ve known for most of my life. Nothing will be the same after this, but for the first time in thirty years, that doesn’t threaten to scare me away. If anything, I yearn to get even closer.
I give up any pretense of holding myself together, moving my mouth to right beside Sebastian’s ear. “I want you,” I say. “Not just tonight. Not just for now. I want you … forever. For as long as you’ll have me.”
A beat of panic batters at my chest as Sebastian eases away, but he’s only leaning back to cup my jaw and look into my eyes. His are strangely serious. He stares for several heartbeats, like he’s searching for the truth of my words hidden somewhere in my gaze.
