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I tried not to give him anything, but my face must have conveyed some kind of confirmation.
“Oh holy hell, K.”
“Thatch—”
“But she’s not anymore, is she, you dirty dog?”
“Thatch—”
“Kline?” Georgia asked from behind Thatch timidly. My tongue made a valiant attempt to choke me. The conversation, the circumstances. All of it was fucked, and a timid Georgia was the last fucking straw.
My girl was a fucking shark, and I was completely over anything that made her feel any different.
“Hey, baby,” I greeted her from around Thatch, leaning out to make sure my eyes met hers.
“Is everything okay?”
With one last look to Thatch that conveyed just how important his eternal silence was, I was up, moving toward my woman to the slow beat of the house band.
I was done with the secrets, done with the space, done with the whole scenario of the night, and nothing made me happier than dragging this woman out onto the dance floor when she least expected it.
“How about a dance, Benny?”
Her eyes cruised the room, but I made her walk as she did, a warm palm at the small of her back allowing her to lead but still guiding the way.
“But no one else is dancing.”
“I like being the first,” I teased as I pulled her around to face me and planted her square in my arms. She blushed furiously.
“Kline.”
“I’m selfish,” I admitted through a smile. “I don’t want to share you anymore.”
The color in her face drained to white, the transition from blush to blanched one of the fastest I’d ever witnessed. Immediately, I regretted the words despite their validity. She didn’t need any more evidence to build a case against herself in the court of Georgia’s opinion.
Lips to hers, I apologized the only way I could, loving her on an endless loop of licks and swoops and tongue to tongue connection.
She hummed right into my mouth, the rightness too powerful to be contained in silence.
My fingers in her hair, I rubbed at her jaw with my thumbs and sank every ounce of myself into her. I didn’t worry about Thatch or Cass or Will or anyone else, and for a couple of minutes, neither did she.
I’d never been this consumed. Not in my entire life, not by anything or anyone.
Wrinkles formed in her little button nose as she pulled back, her delicate hands loosening my tie just enough that I could breathe again.
Relaxed by the music or me, Georgia finally felt comfortable enough to address the night.
“It really is a small world, huh? People crossing paths and never realizing that they already had…or maybe they should have sooner.”
Complicated and twisted, she spoke of herself and me and Rose and Ruck and everyone else all at once. But the answer was simple to me.
“The world is small, baby. But love is large. Big enough that coincidence occasionally rubs elbows with opportunity.”
“Where’d you get that?” she asked. “Ernest Hemingway again?”
I shook my head and pressed my lips lightly to hers briefly.
“That one’s all me.”
I lived in her eyes as she searched the depths of mine, swimming in the pools of blue and fighting to stay there. I was so deep in her, deep in this, entrenched in the muck and lies, and I still felt high.
High on her, high on us, and high on everything I wanted us to be. The wedding, the kids, the happily ever after. I thought it because I wanted it. Every minute, every hour, every day, I wanted her to be mine.
I was in fucking love with her.
And I needed to show her.
“Let’s get out of here,” I pleaded softly, rubbing the tip of my thumb along her perfect bottom lip.
She could feel my desperation, a tremble running through her from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes. Her gaze jumped to our seats, and I followed to find Thatch and Cass deep in flirtatious conversation and Will missing.
I scanned the room ahead of her, finding him at the bar in conversation with a woman and pointing him out.
“They’re all busy, Benny,” I coaxed. “Come home with me.”
I expected her to survey them again, but instead, her eyes just found mine.
“Okay, Kline.”
Okay.
All it took was a little love making to turn that okay into a repeated yes.
I was straddling the line between asleep and awake. My eyes were still shut, but the morning sun rested against my face. Kline’s arms were wrapped around me, holding my back to his chest. Big spoon, little spoon, we fit perfectly.
My mind replayed last night. The bar. Finding out Kline’s best friend Thatch was actually my TapNext friend, Ruck.
Talk about a twisted kind of irony.
When I’d seen Thatch’s reflection in the mirror, a million emotions had steamrolled through me, but the biggest, most palpable one had been disappointment. That in itself had my gut clenching from guilt. That emotion made me feel like I had done wrong by Kline.
