A Beautiful Distraction(82)

“Again, what the hell do you want, Bridgette?”

“You look like shit, baby. Have you even eaten today?” she asked, walking straight into his kitchen as if she’d been there a hundred times before doing that exact thing.

He hadn’t eaten—shit, he couldn’t even remember the last thing he put in his mouth that didn’t come out of a bottle.

He stood and stared after her, thinking for a minute that maybe he had passed out and was having some sick nightmare. Because this could not possibly be happening.

Stalking as quickly into the kitchen as his impaired limbs would carry him, he stopped behind her as she stood in front of the pantry.

“What. Do. You. Want?” he asked again.

“Dammit, Rafe. Do you really need to ask that question? I’m standing in front of you, in your home miles and miles and miles away from my husband and my children, and you still feel the need to ask me that question?”

She spun around to face him, the familiarity of her closeness invading him like a stony virus, spreading quickly and irreversibly through his veins until his entire body was infected.

Her hands lifted to his face and she rose to her toes and pressed a single kiss to his lips. “I want you, baby,” she whispered. Then her mouth came crashing back down to his. His hands moved of their own accord to her waist and pulled her petite body hard against his as his mouth hurtled over hers.

Her eager hands tore at his shirt, peeling it over his head, before they journeyed to the button on his jeans. He palmed her breasts as he forced her body into the wall behind her, filling his intoxicated mind with her moans and the taste of her mouth.

Her taste . . .

She tasted the same as he’d always fucking known her to taste. Like vanilla and mint. But it soured on his tongue and settled uneasily in his stomach.

He wanted cherries. He wanted to taste the coolness of soda and the sweetness of cherries on his tongue after a kiss.

Fallon.

He jerked away quicker than his body was ready for and it left his fuzzy head swimming with the aftershocks as he latched onto the counter, sucking air into his lungs.

“What the fuck, Bridge?” he finally asked when his mind and his body came to.

She stepped in front of him cautiously. “Don’t pull away from me,” she begged.

And he laughed. “Don’t come here spouting off your bullshit to me. I’m over it.”

“I left him,” she quavered, her voice growing weak as she ducked down to try to peer up at his face, which was lowered to the floor. “I did. I left my husband.”

He lifted his eyes to hers and they widened when he saw the truth behind her words etched into the lines around her tearing eyes. “And what do you want me to do with that information now, huh? You want me to fall at your feet and thank you for finally giving a shit about him and leavin’ him and for giving a shit about me and runnin’ back here? What, Bridge?”

“I want you to want me. I want you to hold me, Rafe.”

He shook his head. “I wanted you for too long. I craved holding you in my arms, longed for the day you would tell me you were mine—”

“Okay,” she said placing her hands on his chest. “I’m here now. That day’s today, baby. I’m yours, all yours.”

His fingers wrapped around her wrists and pulled her palms from his chest. “But I’m not yours.”

Bridgette’s eyes widened as she sucked a sharp intake of air into her lungs. “So you choose her?” she quivered, the apparent hurt in her voice for once not sparking his usual need to comfort her.

He nodded. “Fuck yeah, I choose her.”

• • •

“I heard that you were in town,” Fallon purred as she rounded the table and stood beside her new favorite headliner, Jake Murphy, Oakland Raiders star QB and also Fallon’s closest friend from high school.

“Damn, Lynn,” he said, calling her by her old nickname.

“It’s Fallon now, Jake,” she corrected politely.

“Well, Fallon, you look absolutely stunning.”

“And you’re absolutely as flirty as you were back in high school. I imagine the ladies still flock to you with the single sweep of your eye, don’t they?” she teased.

He smiled, his thin lips arching into the bashful smile she knew he would provide her. Jake Murphy was as far from a ladies’ man as they came and could blush upon eye contact. It appeared that his fame and fortune in the NFL hadn’t changed that about him. And she wasn’t sure why, but she admired that.

“So this is where you’ve been all these years, huh? I’d heard you owned a club in Denver. Just never realized you’d taken your talent for dance and turned it into a success like this. I’m proud of you, Lynn . . . Fallon.”