He nodded and stalked off. Caroline was grinning at me. I bit my lip, but I couldn’t help grinning back.
“Girl,” she said in a flat voice, and I laughed.
Then the music cut out, and someone started handing out sheets of paper and pens. Trivia night was starting. Gideon returned with drinks for the whole table while we were deciding who would write down our answers.
“If I see either of you pulling your phone out at any point tonight, you’re both barred from Knead More Bread. We don’t cheat at trivia night at this table.”
I put my hand on my chest. “I would never.”
“I wasn’t talking to you. Mars?” Caroline narrowed her eyes at Gideon, and I could see the ghost of a smile on the corner of his lips. He was enjoying himself. He nodded, and Caroline was satisfied.
We came in second place, which meant we didn’t win the free round of drinks. But someone kept refilling my beer, and my cheeks hurt from laughing. By the time we stumbled outside, I was pleasantly buzzed and feeling like I never wanted to leave this town.
Gideon was stalking toward his car, so I caught him by the hand to slow him down. “Did you have fun tonight?” I asked.
He looked at our joined hands, then at me. “It was okay.”
“You’re such a liar,” I said, and he smiled. I loved it when he smiled.
“I had fun,” Gideon conceded.
I leaned into him, inhaling his scent as I looked at the stars above. There were so many. The air was pleasantly cool, a breeze ruffling through the green leaves on the trees. “Have you ever seen Miss Congeniality?” I asked.
“The movie?”
“Hmm,” I said, nudging him toward the car.
“No.”
“Well, there’s this part in it,” I said, turning to walk backward as I faced him, my lips spreading into a smile as I quoted Sandra Bullock, “‘You think I'mgorgeous, you want tokissme... You want tohugme... You want toloveme... You want tosmoochme.’”
Gideon laughed, tugging on my hand so I crashed into him. His other arm went around me, and he looked down at my face like he’d never seen anything so beautiful. Then his smile faded and he said, “You’re drunk.”
“Only a little.”
His warm hand reached up to tuck my hair behind my ear, and then he leaned down and pressed his lips against my forehead. “We can talk about this tomorrow,” he murmured against my skin, then opened the passenger door so I could get in.
Disappointment crashed into me, along with something worse. The familiarity of rejection didn’t ease its sting. It still hurt so freaking much to be tossed aside. Again. So when my phone started ringing, I used it as an excuse to shift away from Gideon and hide my face. I clicked my tongue at the spam call from an unknown number and pressed the side button to ignore it.
By this point, Gideon had come around to the driver’s side and was buckled in. My phone rang again, and he glanced over. “Who is it?”
“Just these stupid spam calls,” I answered, then frowned when a text came through.
UNKNOWN
He’ll never love you. You know that, right?
Cold froze the pit of my stomach.
“Sadie?”
I tried to angle my phone away, but Gideon had already seen. He took the device from my hand and scowled at it. “Who’s this from?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have they contacted you before? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Jesus, Gideon, I said I don’t know!” My head pounded. I didn’t want his protectiveness. It wasn’t warm and safe anymore; it was suffocating. I felt so ashamed for throwing myself at him earlier when it was so painfully clear he would never want me that way. When would I finally understand that Gideon was a one out of ten, the way I’d lied and said I was?
