“Would you like one, too?”
He levers himself off the counter, coming to his full height. The kitchen seems to shrink three sizes as Davis pulls the towel from his shoulder and folds it neatly, placing it next to Will’s flowers. With a jolt, I realise he’s the only person who hasn’t mentioned them yet.
“You got any rum stashed back there?” he asks.
“No, but I can get a bottle from the stock room.” I whip off my apron and practically sprint down the hall. In the acid swirl of worries pounding through my brain—the shit with Jenny; how far away Jake is; whatever Ada is up to—one thought cuts through them all. Why hasn’t Davis asked about the flowers?
I get the rum, and I’m hunting in my desk for my emergency bottle of gin when the office door clicks shut.
My stomach twists, as though I don’t know who it is. I slowly raise my head to find Davis standing before me. He’s taken off his apron, and he’s wearing black jeans and his Afterglow shirt without sleeves again. His handsome face is so serious it scares me. I wonder what he’s seeing. A worried friend? A frazzled bar owner? A near middle-aged woman who can’t get her life together, having text-fights with bitches from school while she fails at her job?
“Is everything fine?” I ask.
“Cece,” he replies, slowly. “You never got around to telling me what you want?”
15
Cece
You never got around to telling me what you want…
Davis places a bottle of Roots gin on my desk along with two glasses, and I give a shaky laugh.
“Right. Right. Yeah. I found what you want, though.” I hold up the small bottle of Captain Morgan’s rum with a flourish.
A smile ghosts across his mouth. “I knew you would.”
The flowers, sitting proudly in the kitchen, flash across my vision. I almost dropped them when the delivery guy handed them to me. I expected him to say they were for Ada, but instead, my name was announced. Those flowers are a beautiful, romantic gesture, the kind I always dreamed about receiving from the layabouts I’ve had come in and out of my life. But, they’re from Will Sharpe. Gorgeous, successful, business-owning Will. The boy whose name I doodled in my schoolbooks for years. The man whom I have every intention of seducing at the reunion.
So why, with adrenaline from the fight with Jenny still buzzing through my system, am I more excited about the fact that Davis is sitting on the other side of my desk?
He pours me a gin, and I accept the glass, carefully avoiding his massive fingers. I take a swallow as he fixes his own drink and sips it. “So, is Ada okay?”
Why are you thinking about Ada right now?
It’s sweet that you’re worried about her…
The dual thoughts race through my mind. Fuck me, I need to pull myself together. I take another sip of gin. “No, but at least she’s here and not somewhere else.”
“Areyouokay?”
“Um, I mean, I feel kind of high. But I don’t know if that means I’m okay?”
“So, what do you want?”
My laugh cracks brokenly through the air, surprising me. He keeps some version of that same simple question, but there’s no simple answer. I meet Davis’s steely gaze, and butterflies whirl through my stomach until the truth comes tumbling out. “I… I don’t know. I think I need someone else to tell me…”
I’m instantly so embarrassed that I scrunch my eyes as if darkness might delete the words.
Davis’s chair creaks, his footfalls heavy on the ugly carpet. “Cece?”
His voice is so close that the butterflies flapping inside me become a cyclone, whipping up every nerve in my body. I open my eyes, and he’s right in front of me. It’s rare for a man to stand over me, and rarer still that I’dletone, so I take it in slowly. My breathing goes shallow, an echo of panic in every rasp. I try to bring it under control, but the heat radiating from his body is so distracting I realise I’m barely breathing at all.
Davis’s chest is something else. I’m wearing the same shirt, but it looks completely different on him. Better. The black cotton strains across his pecs; the loops and swirls of the lavender Afterglow logo look smooth. Silky. I want to run my finger along the stitching, feel the way the threads lie over his muscles.I raise my finger and trace the ‘f’.
Davis swallows, drawing my attention to his neck. He’s tan under the tats. Clean-shaven. My adrenaline surges again, and I’m consumed by a desire to lick those inked roses, feel his pulse leap against my tongue.
“Cece.” His voice pours through me like hot honey, warming every inch. He cups my jaw, tipping up my face so our gaze meets. The light from overhead reflects in his hazel eyes, the golden orb around his pupil is like looking through a dark tunnel and seeing daylight on the other side.
