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“Is there a reason I should be fighting you on this?” His frown was deepening, and I was starting to regret pushing the issue, but if he was going to fight me, I wanted to get it over with now rather than when Kylie was with us.
“It’s a girls’ night. We’re going without you.”
“No,” he said flatly.
“Nate…”
“No. You’re not going out without me. It’s not up for debate.”
I stopped walking and forced him to face me. “I know you don’t like this, but I’m asking you to trust me. I need this night out. Kylie needs it. I’m willing to talk this out and come up with something that makes you feel comfortable, but that means we need to talk, Nate. You can’t just say no.”
“What if you two stay in the apartment and I leave so you can have your privacy?”
“That’s not the same thing.”
He glared at me. “Well, what are you suggesting then?”
“I don’t know. What if we went to a restaurant and you hung out next door or across the street or something? That way you’d be able to sense any danger that was near me. I’ll have my phone on, and I promise I’ll answer you if you call or text.”
We stared at each other for a minute without blinking before Nate finally nodded stiffly. “Fine.”
I tugged on his hand, pulling him closer, and rose on my tiptoes to press my lips to his in a quick kiss. “Thank you.”
* * *
Kylieand I settled on a Mexican restaurant for our outing. Nate gave me a dirty look when we pulled into the parking lot and he learned the only other place he could sit to wait for us that he deemed close enough was a Popeyes. I couldn’t blame him. It wouldn’t be my first choice of a place to hang out for several hours either.
“Stop feeling bad for him,” Kylie said, yanking me from my thoughts. “He’ll be fine. And he’s had you to himself all weekend. It’s my turn.”
“Sorry.” I placed my phone, which I’d been idly fiddling with, down on the table and settled back in the booth. “How was your weekend?”
“Exhausting. The baby shower wassomuch work. First I had to help my mom make a ridiculous amount of food. And then my aunt had me decorate about a hundred mason jars to use as flower vases. Yes, she’s having her first baby, and that’s a big deal, but did she really need to invite every person she’d ever met in her life to help her celebrate? She never even wanted kids, and now she wants everyone and their brother to congratulate her.”
I pressed my lips together to keep a smile from my face and pushed my strawberry daiquiri toward her. “You look like you need this even more than I do.”
She pulled the straw to her mouth and took a generous sip of my drink. “The fact that you need it at all is worrying. What happened while I was gone?” She pointed the straw back in my direction.
I sighed. “I think I’m falling for him.”
“Oh, the absolute horror. Why does this require alcohol?”
“Because in case you haven’t noticed, he’s not exactly human,” I hissed. “We don’t have a future. I don’t even know if we have a present.”
“What do you mean you don’t know if you have a present? You told me he gave you the best sex of your life last night.”
“No, I said the best orgasm. We didn’t have sex. I didn’t even get the chance to reciprocate.”
Kylie held up a hand. “Start from the beginning and don’t leave outanything.”
“I’d kind of been avoiding him all day, trying to keep space between us. But he came and sought me out, demanded to know what was wrong. When I reminded him we shouldn’t do this, he said something about fucking the rules. He called me his, Kylie.”
She grinned at me. “I’ve always wanted someone to say that to me.”
I felt my lips tip up in response. “Yeah, it was pretty hot.”
“So then what happened?”
“We kissed.”
