Page 45 of Handful

Austen had been gone twenty minutes by then. Left the party without telling me, and while I wasn’t noticing, I’d walked into a hallway and said exactly the kind of thing she’d kicked me out of her bar for saying.

Not because I was drunk. Not because I was angry. Because it was easy. Because the room was right. Because she wasn’t there.

Glitch, the first week. The real question is whether you want to be better for her, or for yourself. Because if it’s just for her? It won’t stick.

Eleven weeks at her bar. Pride and Prejudice on a bar stool. The date. The dinners. Glenwood. Her arms around me on my bike. Five months of watching my mouth — and the second she turned away, I said exactly what I’d always said.

I thought about Mark. Not what he’d said — he’d just nodded and gone inside when I’d called him out — but what he’d meant. What, you’re a saint now?

He’d done the sweep with Austen standing right next to me. Quick, automatic — top to bottom, the inventory he didn’t even know he was running. I’d seen it because she was there. Because I was watching Mark look at her the way I used to look at every woman, and for the first time I could see what it looked like from the outside.

I’d called him out. Felt like something, doing that.

And then she left the room tonight and I became him.

❧

I woke up at four.

Tanya.

Fuck.

Her hand on my arm, running up toward my shoulder. Slow. Familiar. The way she’d always done it. And I’d stood there with her hand on me — Austen right next to me, right there — before I’d remembered to step back.

Easy. I’ll explain it tomorrow. Tanya doesn’t mean anything to me, never has. Austen will understand.

Except.

Austen could hold her own. I’d watched her do it with Tanya before. Watched her do it with the men at Velvet who thought being a customer gave them something. She didn’t need me to fight her battles and she didn’t rattle easy. A hesitation before I stepped back — that wasn’t going to make her leave a party without telling me and send me to voicemail twice.

So if it wasn’t Tanya, what was it?

Then the dance floor hit me.

Oh, fuck.

Austen had been gone maybe five minutes. I’d had her in my arms — her forehead against mine, her hands on my shoulders — and the second she’d gone to the bar, I’d filled the space. Some girl I barely knew. And when she’d pressed in close, when her body had come flush against mine — chest to chest, the whole length of her — my hands had slid off her hips and onto her ass.

Automatic. Not a decision. Just my hands going where they always went.

I sat up.

Handful.

Five months of showing up, watching myself, staying present for Austen — and the second she’d turned away, Handful had walked back in and picked up where he left off.

How the fuck was I going to fix this?

Chapter 12

❧

— Austen —

Mondays were the night I liked best. Fridays and Saturdays were the money and the noise, the chaos I’d trained for and thrived in. But Mondays at Velvet were quiet enough to hear the ice settle.

I hadn’t spent Sunday waiting for him. I wasn’t ready for the conversation — wasn’t ready to sit across from him while he apologized and turned on the charm expecting me to fall for it, just like Derek had warned me he would.