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‘Who I’m with is none of your business.’
‘Why would you choose to spend your evening with a guy who thinks you should be doing baking and book club?’
He’d heard that?
I’d thought embarrassment was a split dress at a wedding—ask my sister about that one—but I discovered this was far, far worse.
Let’s be honest. When a girl finally meets up with the guy who broke her heart, she wants everything to be perfect. She wants perfect hair, a perfect body, a perfect life. Most of all she wants to be in the perfect relationship so that he can see what he gave up. She doesn’t just want him to feel a sting of regret; she wants him contorted with it. She wants to smile and admit that breaking up with him was the best thing that ever happened because it put her on this path to lifestyle nirvana. The one thing she absolutely doesn’t want, especially in my case, is for him to have to rescue her.
I wanted to crawl onto the floor of his car and curl up there unnoticed.
I wanted to rewind time and spend the evening in a deep bubble bath with the latest issue of Cosmo. Most of all I didn’t want to feel this way. The truth was I dated men like Brian because I didn’t want to feel as if I’d been singed by wildfire.
‘You can drop me here and get back to your date. I’ll take the underground.’
‘Because walking down a dark alleyway alone at night wasn’t enough of a bad decision?’
He’d always been protective. He’d always tried to keep me from being hurt. The irony was that in the end he’d been the one who had hurt me.
‘I travel on the underground all the time.’
‘Not when you’re with me.’
Heat flooded through me. ‘I’m not with you.’
‘Right now you are.’ His tone was savage. ‘And unlike your useless date, I’m not leaving you.’
‘Why? Have you suddenly developed a conscience?’ I watched as two streaks of colour highlighted his cheekbones and knew I’d scored a point. ‘Look, I’ve never been one for reunions, so just stop the damn car and—’
‘What the hell were you doing going out with a guy like him in the first place? He’s not the right man for you.’
‘You don’t know anything about me.’
‘I know everything about you.’ His husky tone was deeply personal and I felt everything tighten inside me.
The chemistry between us had always been explosive.
I’d assumed it was because he was my first, but I was fast realizing his ranking had nothing to do with it.
I stole a glance at his profile, wondering what it was about him that made me feel this way. He had the same features as anyone else: eyes, mouth, nose—his nose had been broken a couple of times. But something about the way those features had been assembled on him just worked. He looked tough, like someone who could handle himself—probably because he could—and the combination of rugged good looks and a hard body was pretty irresistible.
I felt a pang of regret that I’d wasted the time I’d had with him. Instead of just enjoying myself and having fun, which was what I should have done at eighteen, I’d been clingy and needy. Part of me wished I’d met him a few years later. Then we would have set the world alight.
But it was too late for all of that.
‘Just drop me off and go back to the blonde.’
‘You don’t need to be jealous. She’s a colleague.’
‘I’m not jealous.’ But I was, and I hated that. I hated the fact that he made me feel that way after all this time. ‘Fuck you, Hunter.’
And I had, of course. If there was one thing we’d been good at, it was sex.
His knuckles were white on the wheel.
His head turned briefly and his gaze met mine again.
It was like the collision of two tectonic plates. I felt the tremor right through me from the top of my scalp to the soles of my feet and for a moment I was back there in the madness of it, my mind twisted by the ferocious sexual chemistry that only happened when we were together.
