“And?” Sandy asks again.
“I may have curled up next to him.”
Mikayla gasps. “How could you not tell us?”
“It didn’t seem important.”
Sandy scrubs her hands down her cheeks. “It didn’t seem important.”
“You snuggled with the man, and it didn’t seem important?” Mikayla asks me, turning her body in the booth until she’s facing me.
“I woke up in my bed alone. Nothing happened.”
“Did he push you away?” Sandy asks, glaring at me.
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Girl,” Mikayla says, drawing out the single word. “No man who isn’t into a woman is going to let her snuggle up to him.”
“He’s just nice,” I say, but when I glance in his direction, he’s staring at me as he shakes what I assume is Sandy’s cosmo.
I smile at him, and he smiles back, making me squirm.
“You really are an idiot. I take back what I said earlier,” Sandy says to me as she shakes her head.
“You’re giving him your number before we leave this bar,” Mikayla tells me.
“What if he doesn’t ask for it?”
“He’s going to ask for it,” she replies. “And if he doesn’t, he’s a bigger idiot than you.”
“Yeah,” Sandy adds. “The space between you two was crackling with so much electricity, I was worried I’d get shocked if I moved.”
“You two are weird,” I say, trying to bury my face in the menu.
“Here we go,” Brax says, setting down Sandy’s cosmo and then Mikayla’s mule. “I brought you the lightest beer I could find behind the bar. Only three percent alcohol.”
“Thank you,” I say to him, taking the beer from his hands. “You’re really sweet.”
My fingers graze his skin, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d swear the contact shocked me. But then again, it is winter and with the air being so dry, it happens often and when I least expect it.
“Just looking out for you. I wouldn’t want you wandering off in your sleep tonight before I had a chance to take you out on a date.”
Sandy and Mikayla both gasp, but thankfully, the sound is soft and hopefully quiet enough that Brax didn’t hear it.
“Me?” I ask, tightening my hold on the beer bottle.
“Yeah, Iris. You.” The soft smile on his face has my heart pitter-pattering a hundred miles an hour in my chest. “If you don’t want to, though…”
“She wants,” Mikayla says quickly, and it’s my turn to knock my knee into her so she’ll shut up.
“Sure,” I answer.
“Sure,” he repeats with a hint of laughter. “I’m almost wounded.”
“No. Yes. I’d love to,” I say.
It’s now or never. I can’t let Lucas’s shit behavior ruin my entire life. He already screwed up the lasthandful of years. Brax is sweet and handsome. I should at least give him a shot, especially after the easiness of our conversation after the bar closed and the morning after at the apartment.
