One second, he was sitting next to me, all the way across the handicap stall, and the next he was holding me so tight I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
But this time, it was in a good way—the not breathing part.
“I ruined dinner,” I moaned.
“You ruined nothing,” he disagreed. “You’re doing what you have to do to survive. We’ll go back out there and order, and nothing else will matter right now.”
I swallowed hard.
“The rolls are super good,” I whispered into his neck, not realizing that I was so close to his pulse until my lips brushed against it. It was pounding away. “Do you think Banger can get me the recipe?”
He chuckled, brushing his lips against my hair as he said, “I think Banger likes you, so the likelihood would be high if she knew the recipe.”
“Does she?” I wondered, idly stroking my finger along the inside of his bicep.
“Banger knows a lot of things,” he admitted. “Those things are rather vast. There’s only one way to know, and that’s to ask her.”
It took five more minutes of idle chitchat before I was calm enough to stand up on my own two feet.
By the time I arrived back out in the restaurant, it was well past when we left.
This one was a long one.
Nobody commented on our absence, and our table was just how we left it, minus the old drinks and cold rolls.
The moment we arrived to our table, a fresh set of drinks was brought to us, as well as a house salad with my favorite dressing and more rolls.
My eyes filled with tears as I realized Rook must’ve told Banger what I liked dressing-wise.
I started to eat, and surreptitiously looked around to make sure no one was staring.
They weren’t.
Their gazes were all completely fixated on someone in the main room playing a guitar.
I didn’t have to think about who that person was.
“That’s my brother distracting the crowd,” I found it prudent to say.
He curled his hand around my face, then pressed his thumb against my lower lip. “Let’s eat and I’ll take you home. Then we can watch TV and rot our brains.”
For some reason, rotting my brain with him sounded fantastic.
And he was right.
By the time we got to dessert, I was so full I could barely eat another bite.
But somehow I found room for the chocolate cake, and it was to die for.
CHAPTER 10
I am yours. No refunds.
-Will to Cannel
WILL
I woke up with hair on my chest.
Hair that definitely wasn’t the normal hair I found on my chest.
Then that hair moved, sliding across my chest and across one nipple, making it pucker in reaction.
“Swear to God,” Cannel grumbled, her face turning to bury into the space between my arm and my chest. “You need to get some damn blinds.”
I snorted. “Considering we’re at your place, and not mine…”
She sighed. “Swear to God. We both need to get some damn blinds.”
I burst out laughing and turned, unsettling her previous position—her practically lying on top of me with everything but her left leg—and curled myself around her.
She sighed and sank into the embrace.
“Is this okay?” I asked her.
She smoothed one cold foot up the length of my calf, and I lifted my left leg to allow her to continue moving her knee up until it was snug against the apex of my thighs.
Once she was as far as my body would allow her to go, I dropped my leg back down and pinned it between the two of mine.
I waited, worried that the move might make her feel confined, but she seemed to do okay. Her breathing continuing evenly against the middle of my chest.
“It’s fine,” she whispered. “I think that you’re getting to be one of the trusted ones.”
I grinned. “What’s a trusted one?”
She swallowed and moved just a little bit closer.
“When it first happened, I couldn’t even be near my brothers,” she whispered. “They were too big. Too intimidating. I knew.” She shook her head, her nose trailing from pec muscle to pec muscle. “I knew they wouldn’t hurt me. Logically, I had no doubt that they would murder anything that even made me cry. But they were just so big. And the confinement of their arms around me… I couldn’t do it. Not at first, anyway. Still to this day I have trouble with Shine. But in the beginning, I considered my best friend’s husband, Kansas, and another good friend’s husband, Trouper, one of the ‘trusted ones.’ Ones that I could hug, or be close to, that wouldn’t cause me to freak out. Eventually, all of my brothers but Shine became that for me as well… but yeah. One of the trusted ones. You.”
That made me feel irrationally angry and happy at the same time.
It was a very odd feeling.
My hand went to the back of her head, my fingers sifting through the thick black hair.