“I’ll have the same,” he said, nodding to Princess. Dedria gave him a cheeky wink and disappeared behind the bar.
“Did you two date or something?” Princess asked, picking up on Dedria being a little flirty.
“I don’t think that I’d call what we did, dating,” he said.
“I see,” Princess breathed. She sat across from him, fidgeting with the silverware that sat in front of her. He wondered if this was the way that their night was going to go. A part of him knew that they should have ordered their food to go, but Wade would have probably made a fuss if they tried to leave.
“The food here is pretty good,” he said, trying to break the tension.
She shrugged, “I’m so hungry that I could eat just about anything.”
He nodded, not sure what to say next. “Um, I ordered the parts for your car this morning, and they should be delivered in a few days. They said it might take a little longer with the holiday weekend.”
“Holiday weekend?” she asked. “What holiday?”
“It’s Memorial Day weekend, so everything is a bit delayed. Down here, things shut down over the long weekends, and everyone breaks out their flags and goes to the parade. It’s a whole thing in the south.”
“Yeah, we don’t do any of that up north,” she said. “I don’t think that I’ve ever been to a Memorial Day parade in my life.” He was sure that Chicago didn’t have many southern traditions. “Will it take long to fix once you have the parts?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “I can have it fixed within a day of getting them. I know that staying here isn’t your idea of a good time, but since you’re trapped here, you should try to relax a little bit,” he said.
“You first,” she challenged. “I’m betting that you haven’t relaxed in years.” He chuckled because she was right. Nothing about him screamed, “Chill,” and the idea of sitting around and relaxing made his skin crawl.
They sat in silence until their meals came. Dedria made sure that they had everything that they needed, including more beer, before she left them to eat. He was surprised that Wade and the rest of the guys held off coming over to their table the whole time that they were there. Maybe his “Fuck off” attitude was keeping them at bay.
Dinner should’ve helped to settle some of this tension crawling beneath his skin, but it didn’t. Instead, sitting across from Princess in the low light only made things worse because she was beautiful. Not in the polished, expensive way she probably intended either. No—it was the little things ruining his composure. The way she laughed quietly when Wade flirted outrageously with an older waitress working behind the bar, or the way that she rolled her eyes every time Butcher got grumpy. He noticed every time she watched him when she thought he wasn’t paying attention, like she was trying to solve a puzzle, and that was the dangerous part, because nobody had tried to understand him in a very long time.
“You’re doing it again,” Princess murmured over the rim of her beer glass.
Butcher frowned slightly. “Doing what?”
“Staring,” she breathed.
His eyes dropped to her mouth before he could stop himself. “That’s your fault.” Her pulse visibly jumped in her throat. Fuck.
The music shifted then, something slower replacing the louder country song that was playing earlier. A few couples drifted toward the small dance floor near the jukebox. Princess glanced over at them and then slowly back at him. Butcher already knew that look, and there was absolutely no way that he was dancing with her.
“No,” he growled.
She blinked innocently. “I didn’t even ask yet.”
“You were about to,” he said.
A smile tugged at her lips. “Do you dance?” she asked.
“No,” he said. That slipped out rougher than intended.
Princess studied him for a second. “Why not?” He wasn’t about to tell her that the last woman he danced with at Savage Hell ended up dead two years later from an overdose that nobody saw coming. He’d keep it to himself that every good memory that he had was tied back to the Royal Bastards somehow, because some ghosts still followed him no matter how far he ran.
Instead of saying all that to her, he just shrugged. “Don’t like crowds,” he lied.
“That’s not true.”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “How would you know?”
“Because you’ve been watching everyone since we walked in.” Her voice softened. “You don’t hate crowds. You just don’t trust them.” Jesus Christ. Nobody should’ve been able to read him this easily, but somehow she did.
Princess stood slowly, holding her hand out toward him. “Dance with me,” she said.
