Warily, I looked around us. Strangers whizzed by, this area so far away from the outskirts where I lived that there wasn’t a soul that I knew. No one to look at me with pity or disdain or questions.
Oh, but inside, there would be plenty.
He squeezed my hand. “Fun.”
My head shook, and I could feel the smile trying to climb to my mouth. “Fun. Tons of it.”
The words were nothing but a mockery of the way I really felt.
“I’m serious. Tonight, you’re having fun. Letting go for a little while. First on the list is getting you inside to get you a drink.”
“I think I need about ten of them.”
His laughter boomed, bouncing against my thrumming chest, and I decided right then, that I was.
I was going to let go for a little while.
Rest in his security.
Even if it would be short-lived.
“Don’t tell me I’m going to have to carry you out of here over my shoulder before the night is over,” he teased.
Swept up in the lightness, I knocked into him as he led me through the door. “It wouldn’t be the first time, would it.”
I peeked over at him. Wondering if he remembered all the things we’d shared. How we’d once been. The way he’d made me feel.
And I was wondering how it was possible he still made me feel all of it.
I beat back the guilt that rippled inside me. What threatened to rise up and take me under.
Not tonight.
Tonight, I was just gonna breathe. Let him hold some of the burden that constantly weighed down on my shoulders.
He leaned in, his mouth suddenly at my ear. “Do you remember that night?”
A flush raced my skin, hot and heated and so very wrong, but I was whispering back anyway, “I remember everything. Do you?”
Oh, I was a fool, inviting him into those memories.
Memories that spun and danced and enticed.
He set his hand on the small of my back, and a tremor rolled up my spine and spread out, his words sending goose bumps racing across my skin.
“Do you think I could ever forget a single moment with you? Not ever. Not for a second. You were the only good thing I ever had.”
My heart tumbled right in the center of my chest.
For a beat, his eyes flashed beneath the glittering lights so severely I was pretty sure he could see all the thoughts inside my head.
Loving him.
Needing him.
Adoring him.
Then he straightened, situated the button on his suit, and guided me inside.
We stepped deeper into the trendy bar. Inside, the walls were dark, the wood aged, and the brick roughened. Lights dull and hazy.
The bottom floor was a big, open space, and a long bar stretched the length of the back wall.
The three levels upstairs boasted smaller spaces, specialty bars and secluded rooms filled with leather furniture, coves for conversations, and private rooms for intimate parties.
Nooks everywhere, making a person believe they could get lost and forget the rest of the world existed outside of the secreted walls.
I couldn’t help but think how nice that might be.
Jace scanned the massive room, looking for the group within the people moving on the dance floor and packed close to the stage, a band called Carolina George clearly drawing a huge crowd.
Or maybe it was just the atmosphere.
Darkness cut by the flashing lights.
The air heated, dripping with sex.
Almost suffocating.
Or maybe it was just that the only thing I could feel was this man. Every step he took reverberated against the floorboards.
Splintering out, becoming mine.
The energy overwhelming.
Too much.
Making me feel flushed and overheated and a little dizzy.
Jace squeezed my hand a little tighter.
Giving me calm.
Strength.
“Ah, there he is. The party can begin,” Ian called when he caught sight of us making our way through the packed crowd, a glassfull of something dark like a beacon lifted in the air. “Or are you actually here to tell us to watch out for ourselves?”
There was a gleam in Ian’s eye. A tease and something true.
Jace laughed, not removing his arm from around my waist when he reached out to shake his brother’s hand. “What are you talking about? Parties are nothing but a bore without me.”
“Sure, sure. This from the asshole who was always telling us what to do.” Ian was all smiles as he looked at Mack for backup, pointed at Jace as if he were the brunt of the joke. Proof that he had been a downer when he’d always been the one protecting them.
My chest stretched tight when I was struck with that truth. He had. He’d worried so much about them all. And then he’d just . . . walked away. I still couldn’t make sense of it.
“Ah, I guess he can be fun once in a while,” Mack said with a wink. He stood from the round table where he was sitting to shake Jace’s hand.