Page 93 of Auctioned To Be Mine

I picked up my glass and drank. I needed to drown the angst. I wanted to forget how happy I’d been. If I didn’t remember the joy, I wouldn’t feel the pain.

I missed Victoria. I missed waking up to her moving around my room. I missed watching her eat. I missed the sound of her laughing at something on TV. Missed the smell of her lotion that always transferred to me. Her hair tickling my nose in the middle of the night.

I missed her.

“Hey, are you dying at the table?” Drew asked.

“I think I might be.”

He nodded slowly. “You know what I think? I think you can’t fix this tonight.” He shrugged one shoulder. “I think you can choose to be miserable or choose to drink and dance.”

“I want to fix it,” I said.

“I know, but giving her space right now is the only thing in your power. So do it right. Don’t half-ass it. Don’t text her at midnight because you’re sitting here and you can’t stand it.” He pointed at me. “You hear me? No drunk texting. That’s not giving her space.”

“I wasn’t going to text her,” I said.

I sat back and looked at the ceiling for a moment. I needed to get my shit together. It wasn’t healthy to keep dwelling on something I couldn’t change. I thought again about all the women I’d left without a second thought. One after another. Was this how they got over me? Did I hurt them?

I had always told myself it didn’t matter. They all knew what they signed up for when they went home with me. But what if they didn’t? What if some of them had real feelings for me? I hadn’t thought I was capable of meaning anything to someone when I wasn’t even trying, but now I was rethinking that.

A woman appeared at my elbow, rather practically on my elbow. I looked up when she touched my shoulder. She was beautiful. Dark hair, dark eyes, a red dress that had been painted on. She leaned against the table with one hand and smiled at me with come-hither eyes.

“You look lonely,” she said.

“I’m fine.”

She slid into the seat across from me anyway. Drew had vacated it twenty minutes ago and I hadn’t seen him since. Somewhere in the crowd with his new friend, no doubt.

“I’ve been watching you since you walked in,” she said.

I wrinkled my nose. “Weird.”

She ignored my judgment. “You haven’t smiled once.”

“Maybe I don’t like being stared at,” I said, wanting her to just leave me the fuck alone.

She tilted her head. “I could make you smile.”

I looked at her. She was exactly the kind of woman I would have entertained six months ago. Hell, eight weeks ago. Before a curly-haired woman walked into my orbit and ruined everything that came before her and apparently was going to ruin everything after her.

“I appreciate the thought,” I said. “I genuinely do. But I’m not the guy you want to talk to tonight.”

She blinked, like she couldn’t believe anyone would turn her down. “Who said anything about talking?”

“Christ, lady,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Go find someone who’s interested. My brother is out on the dance floor somewhere. He’s got a huge yacht and a lot of free time. See if you can find him.”

She stared at me, trying to decide if I was playing some kind of angle. Then she straightened up, smoothed her dress, and asked, “What’s his name?”

I grinned. “Drew. He looks a lot like me, except he smiles more. I know that’s something you care about.”

She walked away. I watched her go and felt nothing. The only thing she made me want was another fucking drink. I flagged down the server and ordered another.

I lost track of how many I had after that. Drew found me at some point and said he was leaving with the woman from earlier. I told him to go. He gave me a look that said he was debating whether leaving me alone was a good idea. I walked out with him and showed him the Uber I ordered. Satisfied, he went off to have the kind of wild night old me would have wanted.

Would I ever be that man again? If, God forbid, Victoria broke things off completely, would I bounce back eventually to become the old me, or would I be changed forever by the time we had spent together?

I was drunk. Properly numb with my head a mess of jumbled thoughts. It made the ride home more pleasant. I was back by one. Dash and Krista were nowhere to be seen, long asleep presumably. That was good. As the Drew’s date had found out, I wasn’t the best man to have a conversation with tonight.