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Now why did we need to know her name, she was the damn hostess for goodness sake. Answer, we didn’t. She thought my boyfriend was hot because he just plain was, and she wanted him to notice her. It didn’t matter to her that he’d come here with another girl; she was so confident in her own attractiveness that she didn’t see me as competition at all. She thought she could steal him away from me simply by batting those stupid eyelashes and practically purring at him in that husky voice of hers.
I thought about telling her that he didn’t care what her name was, but I didn’t want to be one ofthosegirls.
If I wanted my relationship with Ty to work out, then I would have to get over other people noticing just how attractive he was. It was something I would likely have to overcome with all of the guys, because none of them were ugly.
She flounced away, adding an exaggerated sway to her hips that hadn’t been there when we’d followed her to the table. She thought she had him, that he’d be watching the show she was putting on for his eyes only.
She had nothing he wanted, and Tyson’s dark, soulful eyes were all for me. If he’d told her his name, I missed it.
I smiled at him softly and his eyes lit up.
“I could care less,” he told me.
“So could I,” I lied, and I knew from the slight curving upwards of his lips that he knew I was lying to him.
Thankfully, he left it alone instead of picking at me. If it had been several of the other guys, I was certain they would have picked at me.
He lifted his hand, placing it on the table and started sliding it across, towards me.
I knew what he wanted, and I didn’t make him ask for it. I placed my hand on the table and slid it his way, not stopping until he wrapped his larger hand around my smaller one. The moment our skin touched, his heat hit me, and I gasped quietly. I hadn’t been prepared for it, I’d forgotten. Tingles slithered up my arm, his magic caressing me. I shivered as I stared into the dark depths of his eyes as he met my gaze with a heated one of his own.
His nostrils flared as he dropped his eyes to my lips, and his fingers tightened around my own.
“Hello there,” came an obnoxiously chirpy female voice. “I… Oh…”
Becca, the hostess, had left our table and gone off to run her mouth to the waitstaff, probably the rest of the staff as well. They thought they had a live one on their hands. Judging by that disappointed sounding “oh,” Becca had failed to mention the hot guy had come with female companionship.
Oh, well… her disappointment wasn’t my problem. She could kiss my butt.
“We’ll take water, coffee, and menus.” Tyson told her without breaking eye contact with me or letting go of my hand. He was proving a point to me, he really hadn’t cared earlier, and didn’t now. Maybe it had even bothered him that I had cared. If I was a better person I would tell him to stop, that it wasn’t necessary. Today, I wasn’t feeling like a very good person.
“Right,” she muttered in a not so chirpy voice.
Tyson’s lips twitched as he fought off a smile, like he found the waitress’s tone amusing.
I felt her moving away from the table and, suddenly uncomfortable, I tried to pull my hand away from his. It wasn’t anything he’d done that made me uncomfortable. It was me, I didn’t like being a petty person, and I didn’t enjoy feeling insecure.
His grip on my hand tightened, refusing to let me go.
“Oh no,” he said in a soft voice with an edge to it. “You don’t get to run away from me, and you don’t get to hide. We’re past that point, you and I. You wouldn’t like it if I tried to hide from you or pulled away constantly.”
He had a point, and it was weird because I actually liked that he straight out called me on my BS, but… wasn’t that a bit hypocritical coming from him at the moment? Just my two cents.
I sighed and focused on what was important, for now.
I gently shook my hand in his. “You’re right, no more running away. I did promise. It’s just that sometimes I’m not exactly comfortable with myself, and I have a problem with projecting it on to others. It’s my problem, not yours. And I am trying to work on it. Your Uncle usually calls me out for it and I-”
Snapped my mouth shut. I’d almost told him I loved Quinton for it. No way did I want to go around blurting that outrageous nonsense out. I mean, it was the truth, Ididlove Quinton, but I wasn’t ready to admit it out loud when I cringed every time I thought about it in my head.
Tyson squinted his eyes at me as he studied my face. “You, what? What were you going to say, Ariel?”
Back to being Ariel, not that we’d left off from it this time.
Nope.
We were so not going down that bumpy backwoods dirt road. No thank you. Not to mention Quinton would hate it if I told someone else that I loved him before telling him. I didn’t think it was a competition for him, but he did always seem to want to be first with everything. I didn’t think it mattered, but guys saw things differently. Something about having a penis seemed to do strange things to them.
“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” I told him. It was a bluff because I knew he wasn’t ready to talk about what was bothering him.
