The woman was fucking magnetic. I was drawn to her helplessly. I had to be closer, had to get my hands on her again, in any capacity I could.
She skittered away, putting out her hands as if to fend me off. “Stop, don’t, Sebastian—don’t touch me.”
I stopped, hands up in surrender. “Okay, okay, hands off, but I gotta admit I’m a little confused.” I watched her carefully, watching a river of emotions flicker across her features too fast for me to read any of them.
She shook her head. “That wasn’t supposed to happen. I shouldn’t have done that. Not with you, not now. Not at all. Jesus, I’m just so fucking mixed up, and I—” She seemed like she was close to panicking, like last night, but this time she was sober, which meant it would be worse, because it wouldn’t be sloppy drunk girl cute, but sober emotional woman messy. “I can’t—I can’t—”
“Whoa, okay—just take a breath, all right? Why don’t you sit down?” I pulled out a chair at the bar for her, and she sort of automatically sat down, breathing hard and scrubbing at her face. I went around behind the bar and pulled her a beer, because if I know anything it’s when someone needs a beer. “Drink, Dru.”
“I don’t want a drink,” she said, her hands over her face.
“Yes, you do.”
She peered at me, then glanced down at the beer I’d pulled—a lightly hopped local ale. “Maybe I do. God, I’m a mess.”
“It’s allowed,” I said, leaning on the bar closer to her, just so I could smell her intoxicating scent, if nothing else.
She took a drink, sighed. “You mentioned breakfast? I don’t know if I can handle anything else on an empty stomach.”
I strode over to the stairs, opened the door and yelled up. “Zane! Where the fuck is the food?”
“What, I’m supposed to serve your ass too?” Zane shouted back, but I heard his feet on the stairs.
He came down precariously balancing three plates in his hands. He handed me two of them, paused in the doorway as he caught sight of Dru hunched over the bar, curled around her beer and struggling to calm down…at ten o’clock in the morning.
He quirked an eyebrow at me. “That’s all you, bro.”
“Thanks,” I said, rolling my eyes at him as he tiptoed dramatically back up the stairs. “Sissy.”
“Hey, give me a tango with an AK over a weepy female any day of the week.” He shut the door at the top of the stairs, and then I was alone with Dru.
Who was, yes, crying into her beer.
God help me.
Zane might have been on to something. What was I supposed to do now? I had no clue. I wasn’t even sure what the fuck had just happened to make Dru freak out on me like that. All I knew for sure was she tasted like heaven on my tongue and felt like perfection in my hands and I was still so fucking hard in my jeans it was hard to walk.
I brought the plates over to the bar, pulled myself a beer—because, fuck it, why not?—set a plate in front of Dru and sat beside her with mine. She didn’t openly flinch away from my presence—we were close enough that our shoulders were brushing. She picked up her fork, poked at the eggs a few times, and then dug in eagerly. I followed suit, but spent as much time watching her as I did eating.
“Not bad,” I commented. “He overcooked the bacon and undercooked the eggs a little, but not bad.”
She ignored me, focusing on the food, washing down every few bites with beer. When she was finished, she pushed the plate back a few inches, curled her hands around the pint glass, and stared down into the golden bubbling liquid.
I waited, sensing that she’d start talking when she was ready.
“I caught my fiancé cheating on me with a bridesmaid on our wedding day. Yesterday, I guess. Feels like a whole other life, in a funny way. Like…the naive girl who thought she was getting married to a man she loved. I was that girl just yesterday, but today I feel like someone else.”
“Was the bridesmaid one of your friends?” I asked.
Dru shook her head. “No. I don’t really have any female friends, to be honest. No sisters, cousins, aunts, nothing. Just me and my dad. The bridesmaids were all my—they were all Michael’s friends’ girlfriends. And the one he was fucking, Tawny, she was a friend of one of the other bridesmaids. There were three groomsmen—Michael’s three best friends—and Michael felt we needed a third bridesmaid, so Lisa asked her friend. I’d met Tawny like, twice? Maybe? We’d all get together for drinks, and Tawny was there a couple times. I never liked her. I always thought she came across as kind of slutty. Turns out I was right, apparently.”