Okay. I didn’t need that voice in my head tonight. I bought two beers and downed one in two long swallows before wrapping my trembling fingers around the second. Icy lager bubbled into my system, but it did nothing to cool me down. My heart still hammered at twice the pace it was supposed to and my skin tingled so much I felt like I was about to have a bloody seizure.
Calm down. It’s a beer. Nothing else has to happen.
But... I wanted it to.
More than that. Something inside meneededit to.
Clutching my beer, I braved a look around, taking in my surroundings for the first time since I’d sat down. The bar was nondescript. The same as every other bar on the island, except the ones on the military bases where I spent most of my time. Low lights. Dark wood. Couples. Groups.
Single men.
I let my gaze drift over them. One glanced up and caught my eye, but it felt wrong, and I returned my attention to the bottle in my hand, letting my focus drift to the moody house music filtering from the speakers mounted on the walls. To the bead of anxious sweat trickling down my spine.
“Why can’t you be more interesting?”
Bloody hell.
This was a bad idea. If my ex was going to haunt me the whole time, I might as well have taken an earlier flight. Or thrown myself off the nearest rocky cliff. Because that’s how it was starting to feel, this scratchy feeling inside me. An all-or-nothing desperation I couldn’t shift until I’d done something about it.
The thought of getting on that plane, the same hollow human I’d always been, made me want to hurl myself into the sea.
“Hey.” A warm hand skated over my shoulders. “You all right down there?”
I blinked. To the best of my knowledge, I wasn’tdownanywhere, except maybe in my miserable feelings, and they abandoned me the millisecond I zeroed in on the dude sliding onto the stool beside me.
Yeah.
Okay.
I got whiplash as my brain reset itself on his long limbs and swathes of tanned skin. His tawny hair and eyes that shone with the hue of a blue moon.
Despite the low light in the bar, it was hard to miss howgorgeousthose eyes were. Hypnotic and deep.
Friendly.
It took me far too long to compute that he’d asked me a question. By then, he’d bought two bottles of water and slid one to me.
I relinquished the beer I hadn’t drunk and gripped the clear glass instead. It felt colder. Purer. And I latched onto that feeling while I struggled to acclimatise to sitting beside the hottest bloke I’d ever seen.
Christ, he even smelled good. Like herbs and the sea. As if he spent his days split between the ocean and the oregano covered Cypriot mountains. Maybe he did. As I ran my gaze over him again, it was obvious he was a dude who spent ninety percent of his time outside.
Rough hands.
Warm skin.
Kind eyes that didn’t laugh at my apparent inability to claw words out of my throat.
He reached across and uncapped the water bottle he’d pushed my way. “Drink. It’ll help.”
I finally found my voice. “With what?”
“With whatever’s got you wound so tight.” The man gifted me a sunshine grin. “If it’s something awful, you probably can’t change it. If it’s something that feels worse than it is, you can afford to let it go for a few hours.”
“Wise words.”
“Selfish words, actually.”
“How do you figure?”
