Never Been Kissed(116)

My free hand comes up to cover my mouth as double-insurance.

“I know this is a surprise, sweetie, and I’m sorry I sprung this on you, but it needed to be done.” Katie says. She turns to Hunter, pointing a finger at him, jabbing it into his sternum. “I got a secluded table for you guys back there, away from the speakers so you can talk.”

Katie hands me my phone that I didn’t notice she was holding. The bitch took it out of my purse. Rude.

“Here. If shit gets real, call me and the boys will come as back-up. You,” she swings to Hunter again, and the lump in my throat becomes excruciating. I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to talk to him again.

Katie swings her head and dark hair flies as she looks at Hunter.

“Don’t fuck this up. I’m giving you a diamond opportunity here, MacLaine. She better be nothing but fucking ecstatic next time I come around to see the pair of you.” She ushers us to a table that she’s now dragging me towards and Hunter follows at my back.

The skin between my shoulder blades itches, tingling with hyperawareness of how close he is. My mind doesn’t want him, but my heart longs for him to speak to me, to ask for my forgiveness, and my skin just wants his own skin to glide along mine.

Katie settles us in the booth, looks back to the dance-floor and gives somebody two thumbs up and a victorious smile. Tommy and Josh have been acting weird all night, could they be her co-conspirators? Assholes, the both of them.

“Play nice, and I’ll be back in twenty to check on you. Sweetie,” she says to me, tapping her nails across the wooden surface of the table, the sound drowned out by more Greek music and shouts from our party. “Make me proud.”

With that she walks away, and I can’t bring myself to look up at him. Suddenly, the skin on the back of my hands, the map of veins is the only thing that’s interesting. I can’t speak, or think of something to say. I can’t think at all.

I’m just a throbbing mass of pain without any of the physical wounds or blood to go with it. I hold my breath, let it out slowly to try and breathe through it.

“You... you look good,” Hunter says, voice deep and as magical as I remember it.

I want to scream at him for not telling me the truth from the beginning, for making me fall in love with him and Matty, for letting me fall in love with him when he probably was with Aly his whole fucking time. Bile rises hot up in my throat, and I’m so ashamed the burn to my cheeks doesn’t rival that heat that seems to envelop my entire body until all I want is for a hole in the ground to open up and swallow me whole.

In my misery, a part of my brain registers what he said. After all night getting complements, I’m just good in his eyes. Not amazing, not great, not a Greek goddess. That pisses me off and despite the ache in my chest that I want to rub away but refuse to do, there’s now a fire in my blood, and I can hear it pounding in my ears as I clench my teeth together.

“Good to know,” I say, voice calm but strained. I don’t know if he can hear it over the music blaring in the background. Instead of looking at him, I let my gaze float to the dance floor, where my friends are having a good time, totally unaware that a bomb is about to go off in the form of me bursting into tears and attempting to punch Hunter.

I really wish I was dancing, taking another shot, drinking another glass of wine. Anything is better than sitting here with him, being forced to face all the hurts I wanted to forget tonight.

“Why are you here? Why did you come here?” Yup, still studying my hands, tracing the veins with my eyes, admiring my badass black diamond (not real) ring.

“Would you look at me, Sera, please?”

He had to use the please. Frak. And he thinks it’s going to work on me. Bastard.

I lift my head, and wince when I get a look at his beautiful blue eyes. They stay locked on my mouth for a few seconds too long, and to torture him and myself, I lick them deliberately, slowly and watch his face get taut, the muscle at his jaw twitching.

I wait for him to talk. He’s the one that hurt me, not the other way around.

“I came here tonight because I asked Katie to set this up for me.”

I frown, trying to recall when, if ever, I gave him her number.

He smiles, and I feel it devastate my resolve, my wall of barely there civility. He can still do that to me, with just a smile. I really am enchanted; I find myself wanting to do whatever he wants, if he would just make the pain go away.

Hunter settles deeper into the booth, crossing his arms in front of him on the table. I look down at his reflection in the glossy varnish of the table – doesn’t even come close to doing him justice. Bastard, bastard!