I grin. “Not yet, but I just got here.”
He leans closer, his front brushing against my back, and sweeps the hair off the back of my neck. “Not exactly the answer I was hoping to hear.”
What was he hoping to hear?The man to my right moves, his elbow meeting my shoulder, and knocks me to the side.
“Watch it,” Brooks says. The man glances over his shoulder, his eyes locking with Brooks. “Act like you have some fucking manners, Josh.”
Josh’s gaze drifts to mine. “My apologies.”
“It’s all right,” I say, glued to the spot. This isn’t how I thought this would go, and I can’t decide if it’s better or worse than I hoped.
Before I can get a grip on the situation, Brooks slides his left hand up my forearm and to my elbow. “Follow me, Doc.”
By the time I turn around, he’s already a step ahead of me.
With my bottle clenched in my fingers and an ache of anticipation humming under my skin, I wind my way through the crowd just behind him. Each brush of my cardigan against my chest and the dusting of hair across the back of myneck is more sensitive than the one before it. The butterflies in my stomach have turned into hummingbirds, growing and fluttering wildly.
I’m standing on a precarious edge of fear and exhilaration, and I’ve never felt more vulnerable … or alive.
Brooks stops at a table in the corner. The angles of his face deepen under the low light above us. He searches my eyes, but it feels more like a disrobing. It’s as if we’re the only two people in the room, and he’s about to strip me to my bare bones.
The restlessness in my chest grows stronger, and the anticipation of what’s to come overtakes me. I tip the bottle back and take a long gulp of beer. It’s … awful.
I choke, covering my mouth as I gag. My eyes water from the putrid taste of the alcohol.
Brooks chuckles. “You okay?”
I gag again. “I haven’t drunk urine before, but I think it’d be similar.” A full-body shiver ripples through me. “How do people drink that?”
“It’s an acquired taste.” He nods toward the table. “But you also started strong. Why in the world did you pick this one?”
“I didn’t. Terri gave it to me.”
He shakes his head with amusement.
I take a moment to appreciate how the color of his shirt makes his green eyes pop. And the longer I look at him and the deeper into his eyes I fall, the more my shoulders sag.
The crowd roars in delight as a popular song plays through the speakers, and then nearly every person in the building flocks to the makeshift dance floor. I wonder for a split second whether Brooks will go, too, but his attention is locked on me. He isn’t going anywhere.
“You look pretty tonight,” he says, licking his lips.
My cheeks flush. “Thank you.”
“What made you want to venture out to Patsy’s?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Bored, I guess.”
He hums as if he’s playing along.
“How’s your arm?” I ask.
He extends it across the table, relaxing his palm to the ceiling. The sides of his fingers brush my wrists, and I fight not to react to his touch. Then he pulls up his shirtsleeve and tugs gently at a bandage loosely wrapped around the wound.
“That’s surprisingly not too bad,” I say, peering at the slice. It’s a little swollen and definitely red, but it’s not seeping, and it doesn’t look hot to the touch—both good signs, I think. “You must’ve had a great surgeon.”
“She’s made me wait until I nearly bled to death and tried her hardest to get me to see another doctor, but getting to share a small room with her for twenty minutes made it worth it.”
Oh. Astrid’s words stream through my mind.“And there’s no doubt he’d be up for it, if you get what I’m saying.”
