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“Why was it bad?” The words crawled out of my mouth without permission from my stupid brain. This was the problem with whiskey. I’d never touch it again after tonight. I’d never bealonewith her after tonight, if I could help it.
She sank back into the cushions but kept her slightlyunfocused gaze very focused on me. “He tried to feel me up under the table, and when I told him I’d stab him with a steak knife if he tried that again, he left me with a huge bill.”
Whenever I was around her, safely buffered by her family, there was always a low hiss of a lit fuse in the back of my head.
I ignored that too.
Sometimes, especially moments like this, it was like someone dumped gasoline right on top of that fucker and my insides lit up in flames. My jaw twitched slightly before I unlocked the tension holding my teeth clenched together. “Name?”
All she did was smile. That was soft too. “I’m not telling you anything.” Then she leaned forward, the neckline of her shirt gapping so that the lush swells of her breasts pressed together. My throat went dry, and I kept my eyes right on hers, not dropping so much as a fucking inch. “You have no reason to want to know anything about my dates, right?” she asked lightly. “No reason at all.”
This was punishment. I wasn’t surewhyI was being punished, but someone sitting up in some big, fluffy fucking cloud was undoubtedly laughing their ass off at my predicament.
Having her in my space, looking like that, smelling like that, I felt that screaming impulse again. It was always there, like a burner set so low that you can hardly tell if it was on. And the moment, the precise moment that my awareness of Poppy clicked into place, some giant, invisible hand turned the lever and the flames shot sky high.
Get out.
You need space to let this pass.
Go somewhere else. Anywhere else.
It’s all I ever wanted to do when my notice of her got to a level that was hard to ignore.
Her gaze was this glowing, otherworldly kind of thing. “I made a list,” she said.
I blinked. “For what?”
“Why I should come out here and talk to you.”
I scrubbed a hand over the lower part of my mouth. “You need to keep that list to yourself, Poppy.”
The line of her throat moved on a hard swallow. “I don’t know if I should, though.”
No.
No.
Whatever tension pulled tight across the room, binding this strange little moment together, I snapped it when I strode toward the door. “You need to go. I’m leaving on a trip soon,” I said, not even thinking about the words as they tumbled out of my mouth, “and I don’t have time for this.”
She tilted her head. “When is your trip?”
My eye twitched. The trip didn’t exist yet, and boy, she didn’t need to know that. “Soon. Call your Uber back.”
“Patrice can’t come back to get me,” she said on a sigh. She didn’t sound all that upset, and I pinched my eyes shut while my composure tried to claw itself back into place. Fuck, what I wouldn’t give for some magical pill that would make me sober. Poppy kept talking. “Plus, she said there was an ice storm coming in. I don’t think anyone will venture out tonight.”
No shit.
The rain pelting the side of the house had gotten louder, and when I marched to the kitchen window and looked out, it was already starting to form a silvery film on the glass, sticking ominously. Ice was the quickest way to shut anything down, even in places equipped to handle winter weather.
And I, at the moment, was not.
My work truck was at the shop, and even if I was sober, there was no way I could drive her back home on my bike inthis kind of weather. The grip of my hands on the edge of the counter was so tight, I was surprised I didn’t grind it to dust.
“You plan it that way, angel?” I asked dangerously. Her eyes widened at the nickname, unconsciously spoken.
Fuck me,whydid I go and say that? I held my breath while I waited for her to ask, to press, to push. And she didn’t.
“Nope.” She stood and joined me at the kitchen counter. Her bare shoulders brushed mine as she stared out at the storm, and my jaw tightened dangerously. “Admittedly, this whole thing wasn’t very well thought out, but no one will be looking for me tonight if that’s what you’re worried about.”
