Every Time I Fall (Orchid Valley 3)
“Me too.”
Six weeks. I have six weeks to figure out how to do this dating thing. Six weeks to figure out how to not scare him off if anything ever happens between us.
* * *
Dean
My phone buzzes for the third time tonight, and I ignore it. I already know it’s my sister. Come have dinner with us. We love you. Don’t shut us out.
I can’t face them until I take care of something else, so here I am, at The Terminal on a Monday night. I feel like a traitor even walking into this place. I don’t like this bar, but I like Amy’s reasons for wanting to meet me here even less—she doesn’t want to risk my friends seeing us together. Doesn’t want to risk word getting back to Kace that we’re messing around again. If that red flag hasn’t made me back way the fuck off this relationship, I’m not sure anything will.
Amy grabs my hand and pulls me into her booth at the darkest corner of an already dark bar. “Does anyone know you’re meeting me here?”
I sigh. Why am I doing this? “No.” Though I all but told Abbi I was meeting up with Amy on Saturday. Fuck, maybe I wanted her to talk me out of it. I don’t know.
“My date was a total bust,” she says. She leans on my shoulder and grins up at me. If I didn’t already know from her texts that she’s half-drunk and a lot horny, I’d know now. I’m pretty familiar with her fuck-me eyes at this point.
“That’s what you get for dating losers,” I say, and she laughs as if I’m joking. I’m not. We both know I’d prefer she date me. At least, I think that’s what I want, but my bitterness lives beside my love for her, and it’s starting to overshadow it.
“I know he wanted to fuck me, but I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
The dark cloud hanging over me rumbles with thunder. I shouldn’t have come. I should’ve done this over the phone. “I don’t want to hear about how you almost fucked some other guy tonight, Amy.”
“Even if the whole reason I didn’t was because I wanted you instead?”
Yeah, even then. I just shake my head. I had a couple of drinks at Smithy’s before heading over here, but my buzz is fading, and I need another drink if I’m going to get through this night without turning pathetic, without forgetting the promises I’ve made to myself.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she asks.
I grimace. “I guess that depends.”
My stomach is in knots, and I can’t blame the alcohol—though, to be fair, there’s been far too much of it in my life lately. I can’t even blame giddy anticipation, because I know how the next few hours go down. She’ll look at me with her pretty baby blues and flash me a series of those smiles I’m too weak to resist on a good day. Then she’ll go home with me and we’ll make love—only it’s not making love, because mine is the only love in the equation. It’s taken me weeks to realize this. Amy’s just getting off. She’s snuggling against me now because she wants me to drag her to the bathroom and fuck her against the door, not because she wants all my tomorrows.
No, all she’ll want tomorrow is to ghost me until the next time she decides she needs my dick.
The idea of it depresses the shit out of me. “Amy, this isn’t why I agreed to meet with you. I’m not taking you home tonight.”
She trails a finger across my beard and to my mouth, hooking her finger in my bottom lip. Under the table, her hand is on my leg, and it inches up, up, up, until the side of her palm brushes the hard length of my cock through my jeans. “You didn’t have any complaints Saturday night.”
Saturday was another mistake, but I don’t want to argue about it. Mostly because my argument makes me feel really fucking pathetic. If she comes home with me, I’ll want her to stay, and if she sleeps next to me, I’ll want her to give us a fucking chance. If you give a mouse a cookie . . .
Amy’s made it clear she’s not interested in a relationship, and I’m only hurting myself by pretending I’m okay with that. Hope springs eternal, and each time she comes back to me, I hope maybe this is the time she’ll want more than another night in my bed.
I grab her hand from my thigh and return it to her side.
“You have needs,” she says. “More than the average guy your age, to be honest. And until you find someone else, don’t you need me?”
“It’s a bad idea,” I say, and my words come out rougher than I intended, rough enough that if she were a little more sober, she’d hear the truth behind them.