“Sandy,” he said.
“Please.”
And with that one word, he looked up at me. I don’t know what he saw, but he flinched, barely. He nodded at me and his hands twitched like he wanted to reach out to me, but was able to stop it.
I said, “We’ll finish this up. We’ll do the auction. We’ll save the club. And then we’ll go our separate ways. We stick with the plan like we should have and we’ll both get what we wanted out of this. Mostly. Okay?”
I thought that’d do it. I thought he’d hear those words and be out the door and gone and I would collapse against it dramatically as the music swelled upon my realization that I was alone and I would always be alone.
Darren, though.
Darren Mayne was a stubborn motherfucker.
He said, “No.”
“No,” I repeated.
He shook his head. “No, that’s not okay.”
“I don’t think you—”
He looked up at me. “It’s not okay because I don’t want that.”
“I don’t care what you—”
“Yes, you do.” He looked far more determined than I expected someone in his position to be. “But you have every right to not want me. And that’s fine. You have every right to tell me no. And you should, if that’s what you truly want. But I swear to god, Sandy, I’m going to show you every reason why you should say yes.”
I gaped at him because what the hell was going on?
“I was an asshole,” he said, reaching out and taking my hand in his. “I probably still am, to be honest. I can’t change the past. But I will apologize for it every day if that’s what’s needed. Because I know what I want. And I’m going to do everything I can to get it. I’m tired of this. I’m tired of not having what I want.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I demanded.
“Rule ten.” His lips quirked into that cocky grin that I both liked and hated at the same time. “The best rule out of all of them for this little game we’re playing. I’m going to make sure you know exactly what I want from you.”
“And what’s that?”
“You’ll see.”
And then he leaned forward and kissed me, swift and dirty, and I had no time to react one way or another. Somehow, he’d been able to spin us around, me with my back to the room, him at the door. He opened it, turned, and had the audacity to say “Besides, you still have to meet my mother at Thanksgiving” before winking and slamming the door behind him as he walked down the stairs.
“You overdramatic son of a bitch,” I breathed, rather impressed.
And still horribly, horribly aroused.
Goddammit.
Chapter 17: We Decimated the Native Americans. Happy Thanksgiving!
THANKSGIVING PROMISED to be loud and raucous, given that we were having it at Paul’s parents’ house. I was almost dreading meeting Darren’s mother, going further along with this charade, even though it now smacked of something completely different. I’d seen Darren a handful of times since then, but always around people that knew us, so he doted on me beautifully, his hand in mine, his kiss against my cheek.
I saw Caleb at the club a couple more times when I was performing, always standing with the homo jocks, eyeing Darren appreciatively. Darren, for his part, didn’t do anything as blatant as he’d done that first night. He always maintained a careful distance from Caleb, even while Caleb kept trying to insinuate himself into Darren’s social circle. I’d asked around a bit more about Caleb, but all anyone was able to tell me was that he was some kind of web developer and that he seemed to have a taste for large, muscular men. Which, okay. That was fine. Because I wouldn’t knock him for his taste. However, I would knock him into next fucking week if he didn’t stop his goddamned Pavlovian response anytime Darren was near.
Paul said he thought Darren had been trying to make me jealous and that I then tried to make him jealous by using Brian, which was completely ridiculous. And also was exactly what happened, though I didn’t understand why Darren was jealous in the first place. Paul said it probably had something to do with Brian, seeing as how I was a douchebag and using Brian in some kind of revenge plot. Paul was of the mind that Darren and I deserved each other, but redeemed himself when he accidentally tripped and spilled his entire vodka cranberry down the front of Caleb’s white dress shirt. He apologized profusely, saying he’d always been awkward and he would totally pay for the dry cleaning and maybe Caleb should just go clean up because cranberry juice could be so sticky. But then he’d caught my eye and winked at me and I knew I’d picked him as a best friend for a reason. Because he was a bitch. Just like me.
And he seemed so fucking earnest while doing so, like there was nothing more in the world he wanted more than making sure the twinky sharks stopped circling Darren’s chum. And that killed me, because I knew the moment he found out that this was all fake was going to hurt him. Or, rather, it would hurt me because he’d probably come after me with a baseball bat, accusing me of perpetrating the largest mass Freddie Prinze Junioring event in the known world.
Whatever that meant. I still wasn’t clear what Paul’s obsession with Freddie Prinze Junior was.