“Looks nice,” he replied. “Give me five minutes and I’ll be ready.”
He disappeared into the closet then, nearly running over Lana as she entered the kitchen area. Lana leaned an elbow on the back of the bar chair when she reached me, brow raising.
“Nice?” she asked, lips pursed.
“What’s wrong with nice?” I asked.
“Because you look better than nice,” she argued. “There’s sexy. Fucking hot. Want to pull you into the closet and fuck your brains out before this party—all better lines than ‘nice’, and more accurate. Did you not see yourself in this dress?”
I gave Lana a sour look, and she took a large gulp of the wine I handed her.
“Okay,” she said. “But when you get there and your god shows up and he throws you against a wall to tell you how mesmerizing you are—“
“We’re not doing this,” I uttered, though my stomach was so full of knots that I wanted to puke.
The thought of seeing Gavin again, with Tyler in the same room… I didn’t know how my body would react, what I would say, how I would feel. What do you say to someone who you spent a night with that was only supposed to be about sex, but turned into conversations and feelings for another that you think about daily?
It was just one night.
That was the mantra I was sticking to the rest of the night. Gavin or no Gavin, this was a work event for the largest client we’d ever landed. Things had to go right. I couldn’t let my emotions get the better of me.
It was just one night.
So why did it feel like I was about to see someone I’d spent a lifetime with?
A friendly social—that was how Ezzie had described tonight. Not this.
This was a large party.
I thought it would be my team and Ezzie’s, our significant others, and a few people we would be communicating with at Cupid’s Arrow. But it seemed all persons from both companies had been invited because the entire floor was packed with people, lights were strobing around the dance floor, and a hum of music and conversations filled the room.
“I’ll get us drinks,” Tyler said before heading off to the bar.
“Ezzie is a liar,” I said once he was gone.
“Yeah, this is a bit more than a few,” Lana agreed.
“Do you see her?” I asked.
Lana stood on her toes and craned her neck to look around the room, and I listened for Ezzie’s laugh. It sounded toward the dance floor, pulling my attention that way, and when I found her, the blood froze throughout my body.
Ezzie was standing at a tall table with her girlfriend and—
Shit.
I know romantics always talk about the room melting away when you see that certain person across the way, how the conversations and music around you turn to white noise, your hands get clammy, and your heart begins to thud in your chest. Face heating, muscles restless, breath shortening… It was that feeling from my dream—that giddy, adrenaline-filled warmth. My face went numb, and I had to swallow the lump of emotion in my throat.
All because I sawhim.
Gavin.
God, he was even more beautiful than I remembered.
He looked so casual there in his dark jeans and forest green cardigan, a neat white tee beneath it, and the sleeves pushed up to reveal those tattoos and his firm forearms. He was hugging a drink to his chest, his other hand in his pocket, and he was smiling at whatever Ezzie and Raegan were saying to him.
That fucking smile.
His scruff looked just as trim as it had been that night, though his hair looked to be a little longer, a little fluffier.
