“Are you sayingyou’resupposed to be mybetter?”
“I’d let you take me for a test drive.”
“We’ve already done that.”
“Between the two of us, that was a bunch of championships ago.”
“Duncan—”
“I don’t want to justlikemy life. I want tolovemy life. So I’m going to open myself up to whatever the world wants to throw at me and look at every moment as an opportunity. This? Us? Here? This is an opportunity. Life put me in that dress shop last week because I was supposed to be there. Because I’m getting a second chance to do this right, at whatever pace you need.”
He shifts in his seat, making it squeak. “If you don’t see it that way, I can’t make you, just like I can’t go back four years and make you feel like we were as serious as I thought we were. But I know this much—there will always be another chance for me to find what I’m supposed to do. Who I’m supposed to be. Who I’m supposed to be with. And I’m not afraid of what happens on the way.”
My hand is shaking so badly that the ice in my cup rattles. My heart is pounding and there’s this thick sensation of being in a cloud all around me.
But it’s not a stifling cloud.
Not a dense fog that’s too thick to drive through.
This cloud is all lust.
Why is it so damn attractive when a man—no, whenthis man—tells me he’ll leave me in the dust and find someone even better?
That shouldn’t be attractive.
But he’s activated something deep inside of me.
Something that wants to know if he’s right. If he truly gets it. If hecouldbe the one man in the world who could make my life better instead of sapping away the essence of who I am and what brings me happiness.
I liked him four years ago.
I liked him so much it scared me, much like I’ve retreated into badass, take-no-prisoners Addie recently at work because it terrifies me to think that being myself will keep me from the biggest professional dream I’ve ever had.
It’s easy to like him again. To forgive him—and myself—for how we ended.
But I don’t know what that means for our future.
Beyond absolute terror.
It definitely means absolute terror.
A large oval plate filled to the brim with cheesy fries appears between us. “You’re not unemployed,” Chuck says to Duncan with a frown.
We both jerk back, and it takes me a breath to catch up to the fact that we’re not alone. We’re out in public. Both of us, moments ago, leaning in closer and closer.
Or maybe that was just me.
Drawn in by the hypnotic attractiveness of a man not afraid to tell me he likes me, and it’s on me to decide what to do with that information.
“She’s paying,” Duncan says with an easy grin. “You didn’t have to run my credit report.”
“Those guys say you play hockey.”
Duncan winces. “Might’ve picked up a stick a time or two.”
I wince for him too. That was a weak denial.
“For the Thrusters,” Chuck says.
