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As the host shows us to our table, I fight down the urge to make for the nearest fire exit.
“Allow me,” Conrad says, walking around to my side of the table and pulling my chair out.
I sit down, dropping into the chair way too heavily.
Clumsy idiot, a voice hisses inside of me.
Conrad takes his seat fluidly, every movement seeming to brim with purpose. For a man as big as he is – towering over every man in here like the predator he is – he moves without any wasted energy.
I remember the way he grabbed Todd’s fist back at the apartment, the way he snapped his hand up and squeezed as though he was going to crush him.
“What is it, Callie?”
“What?” I say, trying for a laugh, but it comes out sounding forced.
Soft Jazz plays in the background, and all around us, there is chatter and noise. But I can’t stop myself from thinking that everyone is on the verge of laughing at me.
Or pointing at me and yelling, She doesn’t belong here.
“Don’t play that game,” he snarls, a rumble in his voice. “Something’s wrong. You’ve been acting strange ever since we walked in here.”
“It’s fine. It’s nothing.”
“Callie.” His voice is firm. “You don’t have to hide your emotions with me. Ever. I want all of you. I want the good and the bad – or what you perceive as bad, anyway, because from where I’m sitting there’s only good.”
I smile as the force of his compliment washes over me, surging through me, touching every part of me with glittering light.
“It’s just… I’ve never been in a place like this before. And I saw the way everyone was looking at us when we walked in here.”
He narrows his eyes, his handsome azure glistening. “How were they looking at us?”
“Like they couldn’t believe we were together,” I snap because there’s no freaking way he could be so blind.
But then, can I really blame them?
I can hardly believe we’re together.
And yet I know it’s right. I know I never want it to end.
“I wish I could push this fear away, this freaking fear of not being good enough for you. But they saw how ridiculous it is.”
“Callie, stop,” he snarls, a rumble in his voice. “I mean it. I don’t want to hear anything like this again. Do you really believe you’re not good enough for me? You’re everything to me, everything I ever wanted in my entire goddamn life. You’re the only woman I’ve ever felt this way for. I don’t give a damn about a bunch of strangers.”
I lower my gaze, as the unfair sentiment rises on my lips. “They wouldn’t look like that if Alexis was with you—”
“Enough,” he snaps, a feral note quaking through him, causing an answering cacophony of primal belonging to pulse through me. “You, Callie, I only want you. Maybe it’s time I told you. So you can see how serious I am.”
I return my gaze to him. His jaw is tight. His temples pulsing with primal force.
“Tell me what?”
He sighs darkly. “I should’ve told you when you told me, perhaps.”
“Told me what?”
Suddenly the waiter appears, a tall man with a thick black mustache. He looks between us like he just realized we might be in the middle of a serious discussion.
But then he offers his customer service smile, one I’m familiar with from my time as a delivery driver, grinning through my anger when a customer aims all their rage at me, instead of the restaurant.
“Good evening, sir, madam, can I get you some drinks to start?”
I watch Conrad carefully. A ridiculous fear erupts in me that he’s going to be rude to the staff, but of course, Conrad would never stoop to something like that. Instead, he nods, even as I can feel the tension radiating from him, even as I can tell how badly he wants to continue our discussion.
Tell me what, Conrad? Freaking heck, what do you need to tell me?
“I’ll take a beer,” he says. “And Callie?”
“Just a cranberry juice for me, thank you.”
The waiter bows shortly. “Excellent.”
“I don’t even know why I ordered cranberry juice.” I giggle as the waiter leaves us. “I think I saw it on a TV show once where they were in a fancy restaurant and that’s what the lady ordered. Is that what people drink in places like this?”
Conrad smirks. “Callie, my angel, my perfect goddamn angel… when are you going to learn? You can have anything you want.”
He reaches across the table, past the vase with the single red rose in it, past the glittering silverware – past everything that makes me feel as though I’m in a dream and I’m going to snap awake any second.
His thumb makes sizzling patterns across my knuckles.
“What were you going to tell me?” I whimper, as tingles dance around my wrist and up my arm.
