He was stunned silent for a moment, like a spooked animal. A tendril of icy worry crept through me as I saw his eyes dart across my face.
“Sorry, I—” he muttered, leaning back a little. “Let me help you up.”
He gripped my hand and tugged me back up to a seated position on the arm of the couch. His eyes were wild as he looked up and down my body.
I couldn’t read his expression. I didn’t know if he was freaking out or about to devour me whole or—
A flash of grey light appeared behind Red and with it came a gust of cool, windy air. Two voices came through.
In a split second, Red’s gaze was gone. He stood up straighter and turned to the front doors. I stayed on the arm of the couch, running my hands through my hair to fix it, still overly hot and disoriented. The world was spinning a little as a voice came from the front.
“‘Sup, boss? Hey—I got a killer idea for a new tank top slogan—ohmyfuckinggod, is Liam Hardy here again?”
I looked up to see Sam, the bartender who’d been working with Red the first night I came to the bar. There was another tall man next to him, big and beefy like a tank.
“Hi, Sam. Hi, Mitch. Um—” Red said, clearing his throat. He momentarily faced the opposite direction and I noticed him trying to subtly rearrange the front of his pants.
So I wasn’t the only one who was painfully hard after that. I felt like I’d just been woken up from a dream by having ice dumped all over my body.
I was still struggling to breathe normally.
“Hey, there!” the big tank of a man—Mitch—said as he walked over to me, holding his hand out to shake. “Are you one of the new hires?”
“What the fuck?” Sam shouted. “Mitch, you seriously don’t know who he is?”
I shook Mitch’s big mitt of a hand. “I’m Liam. Not a new hire, just a friend of—well, an old friend of Red’s.”
“Nice to meet you,” Mitch said, smiling wide.
“Mitch, if you don’t know who Liam fucking Hardy is, I have about ten video links I’m about to send you,” Sam said, shaking his head like he was disgusted that Mitch didn’t know who I was. “It is a massive pleasure to see you again, Mr. Hardy. I wasn’t even this starstruck when I met Justin Timberlake.”
Sam walked over and asked if he could get a selfie with me. I was still flustered by the kiss, but I agreed, attempting to smile in the picture with him even though the last thing I wanted right now was to be on camera.
After talking for a minute with Red, Mitch and Sam headed down the hallway to the back room, and finally, Red and I were alone again. I made my way toward the front doors, taking a deep breath.
“I’m…”
“You don’t have to apologize for anything,” Red said, shaking his head a little. “This was my mistake.”
My stomach lurched. Mistake. His word flipped a giant switch that slowly brought me back to reality, like a camera regaining focus.
Of course. He was… right. It had been a mistake, no matter how much my body had responded to his. It was actually insane to think it was a good idea to repeat it.
I nodded. “Right. No. I mean, it was my mistake, too—”
“I’m sorry, Liam.”
He was all business again. Composed, in charge, and unaffected.
Still every bit as beautiful, though. It was agonizing. His eyes, his face, his lips were all too much to look at right now. I found myself staring at the fabric of his shirt instead, parts of it still rumpled from where I’d grabbed hold of it.
I swallowed hard. “I’m… I’m still going to uphold my part of the bet.” I tried my best to make eye contact with him.
His eyes snapped to mine. “You’re never going to come to the bar again?”
The thought of not seeing him again made my stomach twist. Our little foray into touching each other again had lit me up like a fucking fuse, and the thought of having sex with him sounded better than any drug I’d ever done.
But I knew why it was a bad idea.
And I was an adult, trying to do the goddamned right thing.
“I know it’s for the better,” I said. “Right?”
Red was silent, his eyes scanning my face like he was trying to figure out if I was serious or not.
“I mean it,” I said. “I know how well we... fit together, physically. But I also know that any time I suck someone into my world, they regret it. I’m trying to stop doing that. And of all people in the fucking world, I definitely am not doing it to you.”
“Right,” he said, but he seemed unable to muster any other words. In typical Red fashion, he was no big fan of expressing his own feelings, even though he could spend hours helping other people work through the biggest problems in the world.