AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The bartender sets my drink down along with two menus.
“Change of plans.” Rigger says. “We don’t need those.”
“If you want to eat, then eat.”
“Nah. I mainly wanted to talk.” He casts a look across the room, spots an empty table. “Let’s go over there, where we can have some privacy.”
I slap a ten on the bar and flash a thank you smile at the bartender, then follow Rigger to the small, round table in the corner. I’ve never felt so utterly weird around him.
We sit and he locks eyes with me. I feel a heated rush. Like I’ve just been strapped inside a roller coaster that’s about to take off.
“Tell me how you’re feeling about me. Right now.”
“Right now? I don’t know. It’s hard to put into words. I’m not pissed anymore if that’s what you’re worried about.”
He lowers his gaze to his drink, swirls the glass around. “That’s a start I suppose. I’d like to know that you still trust me.”
Trust. The most loaded word in the English language.
Do I still trust him? It’s hard to tell. I’d have to wade through a lot of other shit in order to find out.
“Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. I know you’d never lie to me, or do anything to intentionally hurt me. But …”
Rigger wipes his beard, looks at me cautiously. My heart skips a few beats as I think about that kiss. That toe-fucking-curlingkiss he planted on my lips. “At the end of the day, crossing that line right after I met someone I liked, it felt a little manipulative.”
His lips tighten into a thin line. He nods and looks away, then back to me. “I get that. But only to a point.”
“What point?”
“The point where everything I’ve done over the last few years, Vay,everything, has been for you,” he grits out.
“Everything? Come on. That’s a little extreme.”
When he leans back and pulls in a deep breath, I can tell he’s trying to carefully choose his words. His emerald eyes pierce me as he searches my face. “There’s so much you don’t know. Which is why I need you to trust me. What happened the other day, that was me reacting to an overwhelming urge to kiss you. And you’ve made it abundantly clear you want nothing to do with me in that way, that you’ve never thought of me like that.”
“Well …”
“I misread some signals. And god knows I’m sorry. I wish like fuck I could take it back.” I look at his chest, at the few hairs that sprout from the top of his shirt. I imagine unbuttoning it, removing it, taking him all in. “But going back isn’t an option. And now I’m leaving you, at the worst possible time.”
I swallow the lump in my throat. “Why is it the worst possible time?”
He pinches the bridge of his nose, closes his eyes. “Because very soon, I think you’re going to need me. And I’m not going to be here.”
I sit frozen in my chair for a few moments when a waitress appears out of nowhere. “Hey guys. We’ve got some chips and queso, on the house!” A basket of chips with a big ceramic bowl of orange cheese slides in front of us.
“Tell Monica thank you,” Rigger says.
“Classy. One of your fuck buddies?” Rigger doesn’t answer. I push the basket aggressively in his direction. “Why did you even ask me to meet you here? Are you trying to make me jealous?”
His lips part as he searches my face. “Are you jealous?”
“No,” I snap. “I just find it ironically obnoxious that you’re probably fucking half the wait staff here and you chose this location to apologize for trying to get into my pants.”
He chuckles and I am fuming. “Okay, hold up a second. I’m not fucking half the wait staff. I went out with the hostess a few times. I had no clue she’d be here tonight. She usually has Thursdays off.”
“Maybe she heard you were coming in.”
“I don’t know and I really couldn’t care less. There’s only one person I care about right now and she’s sitting right in front of me.”
