AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You mean that bag of wrinkly dicks who put you in the hospital?” Win spat.
“Bro, I like him,” Jamie announced.
My eyes were still locked on Wes’s. As if we were two magnets with an intense gravitational pull, it didn’t matter how many people in the room spoke around us. Our focus was each other.
Wes nodded, acknowledging Win’s words.
Without thinking, I moved on instinct, crouching beside the booth so I was no longer towering over him but at his level or, rather, slightly below it. Tipping my chin up a little, I tapped my fingers on the edge of the booth he sat in. “You okay?”
His nod was imperceptible, but the glimmer of softness in his stare was not. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Just checking.”
I felt Win’s attention beside us, and it made the muscles in my shoulders tighten as he weighed and measured our interaction. The words he spoke this morning echoed in my head like a vicious taunt.
Clearing my throat, I pushed to my feet, the slight creak of my leather jacket a familiar sound.
“Well, these friends aren’t a bag of wrinkly dicks, so this isn’t necessary anymore,” Wes argued.
“My dick is not wrinkly,” Kruger lamented.
“Maybe it is. Maybe that’s why you can’t get a date,” Prism heckled.
“Fuck you, P,” Kruger retorted, giving him the finger.
Ignoring the idiots around me, I stared unflinchingly at Wes. “You literally have stitches in your head.”
“So?”
“So who knows how long you’d have lain there if my guy hadn’t pulled you out and called the cops,” I barked.
Everyone froze.
Wes’s eyes turned into wide chocolate coins. “Your guy?”
Win laughed under his breath, and I cut him a harsh look. He just kept laughing. Asshole.
“I knew you were having me followed,” Wes said.
“Then I don’t know why you’re surprised.” I never meant to actually tell him this. It just popped out. It was getting harder and harder to keep my damn cool around this brat. Ever since that kiss, I was spiraling out of control.
“You never outright admitted it,” Wes said, basically calling me out on my loose tongue.
“You want me to apologize?” I said. “I won’t. I’m not sorry. I won’t ever not be there when you need me again.”
Wes’s entire chest swelled with his massive inhale, nostrils flaring. His owl-like eyes bore into me. “Max.” He exhaled, and my name was a crackling whisper that vibrated all the other unspoken currents rippling the air around the entire table.
“Keep the damn phone or don’t. Whatever,” I said and turned to go.Fuck.
I’d made it barely three steps when his fingers slid around my wrist in a gentle yet unbreakable hold. I knew it was him without even looking by the way my heartbeat ticked up, the rush of the blood in my veins, and the dull roaring between my ears. No one else could ever affect me this way with a barely-there touch.
“Let go,” I whispered, not turning back.
The pads of his fingers tightened a fraction but then slid away, leaving me lonely and partially irritated he’d listened to me for once.
“What happened to me was not your fault,” he said for me and only me.
“I know that,” I replied, still facing away. “But I should have been there. Iwantto be. Please just keep the damn app.”
