I slipped out of his arm, but only enough so he wasn’t snaked around me. He was still close enough to touch me with ease.
“I got burned pretty badly in the past and realized some hard truths. And because of them, I learned the best way to accept them truths is to, surprise, fucking accept them. And now that I know the truth, I’m always celebrating. Always drinking. Always having a good time!”
I had to admit, I almost wished I was sober so I could better understand what the fuck he was talking about. I felt like in the span of maybe ten seconds, he’d hinted at enough bombshells that I’d need hours to unravel and make sense of them.
But then, that’s not what I was here for tonight, was it? I wasn’t here to play therapist to a guy I’d been curious about since I walked in. I was here to enjoy myself, go home early—which, ironically enough, was entirely possible—and…well, the rest depended on whose expectations I was playing by, my own or Mason’s.
“You’re fucking crazy,” I said with a laugh. “You are so not the Garrett I remember.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“No, no!” I said, leaning forward and touching his arm—a response that drew an immediate knowing grin from Garrett. “I just…it’s different, that’s all.”
“Different enough to excite you and make you want me,” he said.
Hey, he called it like it was.
“This is what I propose, Hannah Jett.”
Fuck, the way he says my name.
“The longer you and I stay here, the more your brother might prevent us both from getting what we want. We can sit here and play catchup like two girlfriends coming back from college, or we can get on my bike and head home.”
“You’re drunk.”
Garrett shrugged.
“It’s a small town, and I live about three minutes from here. I assure you that of all the places you could do this, this is the safest.”
But was it?
“And in any case, Hannah, if I have to fucking call the sheriff to get us out of here, I will. And if you knew the way that I was going to please you, you’d be leading me out to the bike right now.”
Well, there were two things true in that statement.
One, as rebellious and dangerous as I was feeling, I was nowhere near willing to just brush aside getting on a bike drunk.
But the second part was stronger.
No man hadeverspoken to me with such self-assuredness about what he was going to do to me. The creeps would say they’d make love to me, the awkward nerds would say they’d take me to a nice dinner, and there were some decent men in the middle, but none had ever managed to speak with such bluntness without also coming across as a massive shithead.
And it wasn’t like I wasn’t already enormously aroused and excited. It wasn’t like I didn’t want Garrett. I just needed a little bit in the way of some courage.
“Come on,” I said, grabbing his wrist. “Let’s get out of here before Mason comes back.”
“Let me go out first,” he said. “You don’t want to know what your brother is doing.”
“What, banging the stripper you brought?”
Garrett laughed loudly.
“I underestimated you, Hannah Jett,” he said. “I’m not the only one that has changed in the last few years, it seems.”
I was so curious what he meant by that. I felt I’d become more assertive and more willing to be myself, but I was still the same girl with the hard background. I was still the same sister that looked up to her big brother so much. Him hooking up with some stripper didn’t suddenly change my opinion of him.
But by the time I thought about asking him, he had walked out the front door. I stood right by there, taking in the rest of the party. No one seemed any the wiser to what was going on—that, or I was none the wiser to them noticing what was going on. People had to have noticed, right? I was sure that everyone knew how protective Mason was of me.
But Brock and Steele were with their girls, and everyone else was trying to make a move. I was on an island when it came to attention.
