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  A grin tugged at my lips as I stepped back, giving him access to the rack of glasses. “Yeah, I’m not making that kind of bet unless I get to say yes, he’ll be down there.”

  Nick laughed softly, which was another strange sound, because it was also something he rarely did. I didn’t know what his deal was, he could be moody and he was really bad boyfriend material, but I liked him. “Hey,” I said. “Guess what?”

  He raised a brow.

  “Banana.”

  One side of his lips kicked up. “Is that like a code word for something?”

  “Nope. Just felt like I needed to say it.” I grabbed a towel and swiped up a bit of spilled liquor. “But wouldn’t that be a weird safe word during BDSM play? Like the chick yelling banana in the middle of sex? That would be so awkward.”

  Nick stared at me.

  “I read this book once where the girl yelled cat right before they were about to get some bow-­chicka-­bow-­wow,” I told him. “It was high-­larious.”

  “Okay,” he murmured before wandering away.

  Jax was standing by the bar, both brows raised. “What in the hell are you two talking about?”

  I grinned at him and Calla. “Safe words used during BDSM.”

  Calla’s eyes widened. “Um, all right, wasn’t expecting that.”

  A giggle escaped me, and in the moment, I felt a lot lighter than I had the whole day. “You two want something to drink?” I looked at Calla and smiled like the Joker on meth. “How about tequila?”

  She drew back, and I almost expected her to hiss at me. “Hell no. I don’t want any of that devil’s juice.”

  Jax chuckled as he dropped his arm over her shoulders and tucked her against his side, almost protectively. And that brought forth an aww moment from me. “I don’t know. It’s kind of cute when you cuddle a bottle,” he said.

  Her cheeks flushed as she placed a hand on his lower stomach. “I think I’ll just stay away from that.”

  I ended up forking over a Bud Light for him and a hard lemonade for her. “Like the shirt,” Calla commented as she cradled the bottle close to her pouted rosy lips. “I’m gonna miss you and your shirts.”

  “I’m going to miss you, too!” I shrieked, and if I could actually climb over the bar, I would’ve thrown myself on her. “But you’re coming back, right? We have like joint custody of you.”

  She laughed. “I’ll be back before you know it. You won’t even miss me.”

  But I would totally miss her.

  “I’m tagging along with her when she comes back.” Tess appeared beside her, smoothing a hand down the glossy length of her dark hair. “I like it here.”

  Calla glanced over to where Jase was talking to Cam. “I hope you aren’t planning to leave him behind, because I don’t think that will work out well for you.”

  “I’d never do such a thing.” Tess looked over at me. “He’s great arm candy to have around.”

  My gaze traveled back to the silver-­eyed hottie known as Jase. “True dat.”

  “Okay, I think it’s time for me to go.” Jax dropped his arm as he pressed a kiss to Calla’s cheek. “Jase is dreamy, though! I’d do him.”

  He’d said that loud enough that Jase sent us a confused look that he somehow managed to make look sexy, and I cracked up into a fit of hyena-­type giggles.

  Tess shook her head as she leaned into Calla. “All seriousness, both of us really like it up here. So do Cam and Avery. Good place to get away to.”

  “And you can always come visit us,” Calla said to me.

  I nodded absently as the door swung open. Only ­people who were close to Calla and Jax would be coming in tonight, and I expected it to be Katie since she hadn’t made an appearance yet, but that wasn’t who it was.

  Reece walked in, wearing a variation of what he had on earlier today, and my stupid heart did a little jump. It was Friday night, and being a deputy, shouldn’t he be working?

  Dammit.

  He didn’t even look to where the guys were crowded around one of the tables. His attention immediately went to the bar. Our eyes locked. Girlie parts instantly engaged.

  Double dammit.

  Like every time I saw him, he took a bit of my breath away. Maybe it was the way he walked—­oh hell, he was heading right for the bar! I veered around, my gaze landing on Nick. “I’m going to go check stock.”

  “One of these days you’re going to tell me why you do this,” Calla muttered, and I didn’t hear what else she said, because I was hightailing my bony butt out of the bar.

  Maybe it was a bitchy thing to do, because he’d been really thoughtful coming to find me this morning. It was something I’d thought about all afternoon. Well, about that and Henry Williams wanting to make amends.

  Amends—­as if that were truly possible.

  God, I wanted to laugh as I dashed down the hall and dipped into the stockroom. Closing the door behind me, I leaned against it and blew out a breath, stirring a chunk of purple and brown hair that had fallen in my face. I didn’t want to think about Henry right now and as terrible as it sounded, I didn’t want to think about Charlie either. My mood was up, and I still had several hours left before my shift ended and I could crash.

  So my mind danced its way over to Reece, and I still had no idea why he’d made a special trip to tell me about Henry. Granted, we’d been really good friends at one point, but for eleven months, there’d been a no-­fly zone between us. He’d breached that, and I really didn’t know what to think about what it meant. It probably meant nothing—­it couldn’t mean anything, because Reece . . . well, he’d really taken a hunk out of my heart eleven months ago.

  And he didn’t even know it.

  I waited a good five minutes, deciding that Reece would’ve gotten a drink from Nick by then. Pushing off the door, I tucked the strand of hair behind my ear and opened it.

  “Criminy!” I shrieked, stumbling back into the stockroom.

  Reece stood there, hands braced against the door frame, his chin dipped low and jaw hard. He did not look happy. “Are you done hiding?”

  “I . . . I wasn’t hiding. N-­not at all.” Heat flooded my cheeks. “I was doing stock.”

  “Uh-­huh.”

  “I was!”

  He arched a brow.

  “Whatever. I need to get back out there, so can you kindly remove—­”

  “No.”

  My mouth dropped open. “No?”

  He straightened, but instead of backing off, he stalked forward, catching the door on the way in. The bicep in his right arm flexed as he slammed it shut. “You and I need to talk.”

  Oh dear. “Buddy, there’s nothing we need to talk about.”

  Reece kept coming toward me, and I was moving backward before I even knew what I was doing. I bumped into a shelf. Bottles rattled behind me, and then he was right in front of me, so close that when I inhaled, I could practically taste the crisp, fresh scent of his cologne.

  Two hands landed on the shelf on each side of my shoulders and then he managed to lean in even further. His warm breath danced across my cheek. A fine shiver curled its way down my spine. Whoa. Girlie parts engaged, locked, and ready for takeoff.

  I was so going to hit myself later.

  “I’ve let this go on between us for far too long,” he said, and his stare snared my wide-­eyed gaze. The blue . . . dang, it was cobalt—­a blue that was hard to mix and capture with watercolors.

  My tongue felt heavy. He hadn’t been this close since that night with all that whiskey. “Nothing is going on between us.”

  “Bullshit, Roxy. You’ve been avoiding me for months.”

  “Nuh-­uh,” I said, and yeah, that was lame-­sounding, but his mouth was right there, and I remembered clearly what his mouth felt like against mine. A wonderful combination of firm and soft, and I also recalled h
ow strong he was. How he’d lifted me right off the floor and . . .

  And I really needed to stop thinking about that right now.

  “Eleven months,” he said, voice deeper. “Eleven months, two weeks and three days. That’s exactly how long you’ve been avoiding me.”

  Holy crap, did he just count that out to me? Because he was totally right. That was exactly how long I’d been steering clear of him, in between the moments I’d told him to screw off.

  “We’re going to talk about the last time you and I had a decent conversation.”

  Oh no, we were so not going to talk about that.

  He dipped his head, and his voice was right in my ear. When he spoke, my fingers tightened on the edge of the shelf I was hanging onto. “Yeah, babe, we’re going to talk about the night you drove me back to my place.”

  I swallowed hard, unnerved. “You . . . you mean the night you were drunk off your ass, and I had to drive you home?”

  Reece lifted his head and those eyes bored into mine. Neither of us spoke for a long moment, and I was thrust back eleven months, two weeks and three days ago. He’d been at the bar, and we’d been flirting with each other like we’d been doing every time we saw each other since he returned from overseas. But when he came back, it was like those years he’d been gone had washed away. Visions of marriage and making babies had danced in my head despite the fact I’d ordered myself not to read into the harmless flirting. But I’d been infatuated and I’d also been an idiot. That night, he’d asked me to drive him home, and I’d thought he was finally making a move—­a really weird way to make a move, but I hadn’t really thought the whole thing through. I’d been crushing on this guy forever and I had been greedy with his attention, so I did it. When we’d gotten to his place, I’d followed him inside and I . . . I had been the one to really make the move.

  Gathering up all the courage I had in me, I had kissed him, right inside his apartment, the moment he’d closed the door. Things had escalated quickly. Clothes had come off, body parts were most definitely touching, and I . . .

  “I’d give anything to remember that night,” Reece continued, looking me straight on, and that voice got richer. “Anything to remember what it felt like being inside of you.”

  Several things happened to me all at once. Muscles low in my belly tightened at the same moment disappointment swelled like a tide, washing away the anger flushing my system. I closed my eyes as I bit down on my lip.

  Reece believed that eleven months, two weeks, and three days ago, we’d had sex—­wild, animalistic against-­the-­wall sex, but he’d been too drunk to remember it. Too shitfaced to remember anything past the moment we’d gotten naked in the hallway.

  I just hadn’t realized he’d been that far into his cups, which was stupid, because I bartended and knew when ­people were plastered and needed to be cut off. Hell, he’d asked me to drive him home, for crying out loud, but I had been so . . . so caught up in him. So damn hopeful and so beyond crushing, because it was more than that. I had fallen in love with him when I was fifteen and that hadn’t changed in all those years.

  I’d stayed the night with him, and when he’d woken up the next morning, hungover and so damn apologetic, regretful and seconds from chewing his arm off to get away from me, my heart had cracked. And in the immediate weeks following that night, when he’d avoided me like I was infested with the plague, my heart had shattered.

  The sad thing was Reece had it all wrong.

  We hadn’t even gotten to the point where slot A fit into slot B. We hadn’t had sex that night. He’d barely made it to the bedroom before passing out, and I had stayed with him because I’d been worried and I thought . . . it didn’t matter what I thought, because we hadn’t had sex.

  Chapter 4

  What was worse than Reece thinking we had sex and regretting what never happened? And seriously, what could be more messed up than that? Reece Anders despised lies of any kind. White lies. Little lies. Necessary lies. Forgiving lies. Any lies.

  Mine was kind of a white lie since I never said we had sex, I just never said we didn’t. Even though he’d known me since I was fifteen, he’d been there during the aftermath of what happened to Charlie, and the first night back from being in the Marines for four years, he’d shown up at my parents’ house. To this day, Mom swore he’d been looking for me, but our families had grown close, so I doubted that was the case. I’d moved out at eighteen and I wasn’t there, but when my parents called and demanded that I come home, I’d been expecting something terrible, because Mom sounded like she’d been seconds from stroking out. I had no idea Reece was home, and he gave me . . . oh wow, the best hug ever. And in spite of the friendship we’d built since he became a deputy in the county, he would be so pissed.

  His absolute hatred of lying had started way before I’d met him and had to do with his father. I didn’t know the details, but I figured it involved cheating since he’d moved in with his mom and stepdad while his father was a serial dater.

  So, yeah, lying to Reece equaled shitstorm of the century.

  Reece stared down at me, waiting for a response, and I didn’t have any. So many times during the last eleven months I wanted to shout the truth in his face. That we hadn’t had sex, but the hurt he created based on the way he’d acted that following morning, then ignoring me for weeks was compounded by the fact he had to get so drunk for him to think he had sex with me. The pain had cut deep.

  I was embarrassed—­horrified, really—­and if Charlie were aware of the situation, he probably would’ve smacked me upside the head. Because I should’ve known better, but I hadn’t and I had paid for that in spades. Days passed while I was under the influence of an ice-­cream coma. Weeks when I thought I’d burst into tears whenever I heard his name mentioned. For months, I couldn’t look at Reece without my face turning blood red.

  And that hurt had lingered.

  Gathering up that pain and humiliation, I held it close as I drew in a deep breath that sharpened my tongue. “Like I said, Reece, there’s really nothing to talk about. I barely even remember that night myself.” Lies! All lies! I forced a shrug. “Nothing to write home about.”

  He arched a brow. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Do you really think your prowess in bed is so stellar that I’d remember one night with your drunk ass?” I fired back.

  “No.” His lips curved in a tight half smile, and I couldn’t believe he was still standing there. “What I’m saying is that you obviously remember a whole lot if you’ve been avoiding me all this time.”

  Hell, he had a good point. “Actually, it’s more of an I’d-­rather-­not-­remember kind of thing.” The moment those words came out of my mouth, I wanted to take them back, because they were mean. Even though I avoided him at all costs and could be pretty spiteful toward him, it wasn’t something I enjoyed.

  His lips thinned as he tilted his head to the side. The bright fluorescent light glided over the sharp curve of his cheek. A heartbeat passed, and I expected him to fling an insult back in my direction. I would’ve deserved it after that slam, but that wasn’t what I got. “I wish I could say I know it was good for you, and babe, I know I could’ve made it real good for you,” he said, his voice dropping again, and those coils low in my belly spun even tighter.

  Memories swamped me, stealing my breath. Even plastered, he’d been well on his way to making it outstanding. Like never gonna forget this night in a good way. My lips parted on a soft inhale as a slow burn invaded my veins. His gaze moved to my mouth, and my chest rose sharply. His stare stayed there long enough that a wild idea exploded in my brain, like the king of all wild ideas, because obviously when I got a wild idea in my head, it ended epically bad. But that knowledge did nothing to stop it from taking hold.

  I thought Reece looked like he wanted to kiss me as his hooded gaze zeroed in on my mouth. And when I took my next breath, I wasn’t sure
if I’d stop him. What the hell did that say about me exactly? I was a glutton for punishment.

  He cleared his throat as he dragged his gaze up to mine. “But knowing how trashed I was, I’m not sure about any of it. I don’t—­”

  “I need to get back out there.” There was no way I could continue in this conversation. I needed to get out of there before a mixture of desire and a need to make him feel better hijacked my common sense. I started to dip under his arm, but he shifted his body. As tall and built as he was, there was no way I was getting past him.

  “For Christ sakes, stop running from me.”

  My hands closed at my sides. “I’m not running.”

  His eyes met mine, and once again, I was trapped as he carefully placed the tip of his finger against the center of my glasses and pushed them back up my nose. My heart flip-­flopped in response to a gesture he used to do all the time.

  “I need to get them adjusted,” I would say, and he’d always respond with, “Nah. I like being your official keeper of your glasses.” Goodness, remembering that made my heart ache.

  “Did I . . . did I do wrong by you, Roxy?”

  I stiffened as if steel had been dropped down my spine. “What?”

  Everything about Reece’s posture had changed. He was still close, his hands still on the shelves on either side of me, but the lazy arrogance that seemed to bleed from his every pore was gone. Every part of him was alert and tense. “Did I hurt you somehow?”

  My mouth dropped open. Had he hurt me? Yes. He’d bruised my heart, smashed it into pieces, but I didn’t think that’s what he meant. “No. God, no. How could you even think that?”

  His eyes closed briefly as he exhaled harshly. “I don’t know what to think.”

  Oh God, my entire chest clenched. I needed to tell him the truth, because it didn’t matter how badly my feelings and pride were bruised, I couldn’t let him think something like that about himself. The words formed on the tip of my tongue.

  “It should’ve never happened,” he continued. “You and I . . . not in that way.”