“Just let it happen, if it happens,” Amie says, rubbing my arm with a warm hand. “You don’t even have to tell him if you don’t want to. But you like him, Roo. You’re different since meeting him, we can all see it. He’s good for you.”
I smile weakly, fighting to hold the tears at bay. I knew my girls wouldn’t let me down. I knew they wouldn’t judge me. But if they find out the other secrets I’ve been harbouring, the things I’ve done, then who knows. Maybe all bets will be off.
Chapter fourteen
Everett
“She really yees myhaw, if you get what I’m sayin’.” I pick up the bottle and bring it to my lips, drinking down half of my beer in one long mouthful. It’s cold and refreshing, the perfect antidote to this hot as hell Texas night, and to the heat flushing my skin when I think of Ruth.
“She got any friends?”
"A few. One’s dating a pilot. One likes tits.”
“Damn shame,” Jody sighs, and throws back half a glass of bourbon in one mouthful. “Daaaamn shame.”
“Third one likes cowboys, though.”
“Here we go, boys,” Brooks announces his return to the table and interrupts Jody’s horndog requests, his hands full with two more bottles of beer and one soda. He drew the short straw tonight, so he’s our designated driver. It’s a nice change. It’s usually me losing the Rock, Paper, Scissors game, or incorrectly guessing the coin toss.
“Ev was just yappin’ my ear off about his girl,” Jody pipes up. I kick his shin beneath the table and he jabs me with a pointy elbow.
“Oh, yeah, your little London girl. How’s that going?”
“Better if she were closer than London,” I grumble, swapping an empty bottle for a full one.
“You mean, so you can get your dick wet instead of using your hand all the time?”
I flick a peanut at Brooks, nailing him right between the eyes. He clinks his soda bottle to Jody’s and then mine with a shit-eating grin.
“If you must know, I’ve been a gentleman,” I say. It’s not that I didn’t want to—because, lord forgive me, the moment her sweet vanilla perfume engulfed me, I was a goner. I wanted nothing more than to sink into her, heart, body, and soul. I still do.
But truthfully, as much as I want her, and as wild and uncontrolled this attraction between us is, the woman terrifies me. She’s so smart, so beautiful, so confidently in control—in spite of the fear in her eyes when she rode Della—to jump immediately into something physical feels like I’d be doing her an injustice, somehow. Like she deserves—no,demands—more than that.
And so help me God, but I’m gonna be the one to give her everything.
“She cock-blocked you?” Jody crows. “Oh, man alive. This is too good.” He clinks his bottle against Brooks’s with a delighted grin.
“She did notcock-block me,” I say. “I just didn’t push her into anything. She deserves more than a quick fuck, and I’m not about to take her body if she’s not ready to give me her heart and soul, too.”
The pair of them stare at me in silence for a moment, before Brooks takes a long pull from his beer bottle.
“Well, shit,” he says. “Looks like Evvy-boy is indeep.”
Jody gapes at me, then at Brooks, and before long, the three of us are howling, clutching at our sides. Sometime during our hysteria, the pool table frees up, and Jody leaps for it. Brooks and I follow.
“Rack ‘em up, Ev,” Brooks says, gesturing with the glass bottle in his hand. “Winner plays Jody?”
Jody’s always been the best of us at pool. Brooks is the best at darts. And me? I wipe the floor with both of them when itcomes to cornhole. I know, it’s hardly a bar game—at least, there’s no cornhole board in Tell’s Tavern—but this is Texas, and we grew up outdoors.
Jody smirks, leaning against the table and biting his lip while he watches a pair of pretty ladies walk by, and Brooks chalks the end of his cue whilst I rack the balls for a game of 9-ball.
“So, you gonna see her again?” Brooks shoots the cue ball and breaks the rack. He fails to pocket anything, so I scan the table for the one ball and choose my target pocket. I take my shot and miss, momentarily distracted by Jody murmuring the wordshot damnbeside me. I look up, ready to call him an asshole, and see what’s got him so excited. Three women have danced up to the house band, sliding their bodies seductively around the guitar and bass players.
They’re beautiful women, that’s for sure. I can see why they caught Jody’s eye—his has always been a wandering one. But the blonde hair and doll-like makeup doesn’t thrill me the way it did when I was a younger man. I turn back to Brooks.
“She’s comin’ back in a couple weeks,” I offer as a belated answer to his question. “I can’t wait to see her again.”
Those last words slip out without permission. Brooks and Jody are more than just my best friends. They’re my brothers. The three of us grew up together, and there’s nothing about me they haven’t seen, nothing they don’t know. But for some reason, I want to hold Ruth close to my chest. Sacred, almost. I don’t want to share her with them. I want to keep her for myself.
