“Like on a real date?”
“Oh,” I breathe. “Um… okay.”
He grins, and it’s meant to be boyish and cute, but it does nothing.
I take a step toward him and throw my arms around his neck.
“Yes, Levi,” I say, standing on my toes. “You can take me out on a date.”
“You’re making me blush like a twelve-year-old boy.”
I laugh, and it doesn’t feel even a tiny bit real.
I inch my face closer to his and say, “Is that a good thing?”
Levi’s hands grip my hips tightly—I hate that. For a moment, I think about swatting them away.
“We’ll just have to find out, I guess.”
The tip of my nose bumps against his, his repulsive beer breath mingles with mine, and just when I’m about to kiss this tall, so-not-my-type blond, I see him—standing by the pool table with a bottle of water in his hand.
It’s a motherfucking ghost, Lana.
I drop flat on my feet, my arms unwinding from around Levi’s neck as I gape across the bar, slightly shoving him away from me.
The light brown eyes from my dreams and nightmares find mine, and I’m sober and shuddering.
My entire world narrows in on him, right there.
There is no sound, no one in the room. Only me and him.
I can’t breathe.
CHAPTER 2
Christian
It’s humbling when the entire population of the small town you grew up in laugh in your face when you return for the first time in four years, wearing a custom Tom Ford suit.
It’s even more humbling when your old best friends make fun of the suit and the carto your face.
Butthe mosthumbling thing is watching the girl you came back for throw her arms around some guy she is about to kiss.
Levi Campbell has his hands on her hips, and I don’t miss the way she flinches. But she’s letting him touch her anyway. And the cherry on top? She’s smiling, giving him those dimples that are mine. The same dimples I used to press my thumbs into with a grin on my face.
I love these.
They’re just dimples.
But they’re my favorite.
Now my eyes are burning and my teeth hurt from the clenching because their mouths are mere inches apart. Levi is going to kiss my girl and she’s going to let him. It should befine. I should have expected her to move on, it would be a shitty thing for me to think she’d wait for me all this time.
Itriedto move on. It didn’t work and I spent regrettable and dark moments with women. And all of those moments should have been happy and intimate with Lana. I did what I had to to forget. It would be unfair of me to think she couldn’t do the same.
Lana is leaning in closer to him now. Her lips part the way they used to for me, and I can’t watch.
But Lana stops, just a few seconds before it happens, and her eyes find mine. I swear everything stops, maybe even my heart—which I’m fine with as long as I’m looking at her. I could die a happy man right now, as long as she’s looking at me. The only eyes that have ever mattered to me are the only woman who has ever mattered to me.
