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“Sorry.”
“’Sokay.”
The road from poking my chest to running her hand up it was a short one. “So, anyway, Jake…”
Looking over at Reggie, I could see he was laughing at me, and the other guys from the team were watching in amusement from the bar. They all thought I was about to get lucky. Little did they know.
“So, anyway, Carissa…”
Someone brushed by her and she stumbled against me with a gasp. I caught her and with my hands on her shoulders, pushed her away as gently as I could while still trying to make my point.
“You were saying?” She frowned, trying to remember. “You were going to come home with me? Is that what you were saying?”
She was cute, and yeah, in another lifetime, or in a parallel universe that didn’t have an Emma in it, maybe I would have. But I lived in this universe and frankly, the way Emma haunted my every waking thought, I’d probably never get laid again. “I wasn’t saying that, no.”
She pouted again. “Whynot? Are you married?” Her gaze dropped to my left hand and she gazed at it fuzzily.
“No.”
“Come on, then. I’m horny, you’re hot. Match made in heaven.” I made the mistake of laughing at that and she took it as encouragement, stepping closer again. Tried to slide her hand up my chest again. Stumbled again. I caught her again, biting back a groan of frustration.
“I’m sorry, I can’t.”
She let out a sigh. “Fine. I’ve got a perfectly good vibrator at home, anyway.” Leaning against me, she hunted around in her purse for her keys, letting out a long stream of swear words when she couldn’t find them.
My eyes moved to the door so I could figure out a path through the crowd to help Carissa’s drunk ass out of there. Fuck. The very reason I’d said no to her had just walked into the bar. Her blue eyes lasered in directly on me, flicked over Carissa, still leaning against me while she looked for her keys. My heart squeezed so tight it made me breathless. “It’s not what you think,”I wanted to yell over the laughing, chatting crowd.
But Emma turned away, towards the other end of the bar, a group of girls we’d gone to high school with surrounding her. A few of them shot me some looks, then they were out of sight, swallowed up by the crowd.
“Yay! Here they are!”
“You’re not driving, Carissa.”
“What? I’m fine.”
“No, you aren’t. Call an Uber or something.”
“Can’t. My phone’s dead.”
I shoved my fingers through my hair, still feeling the impact of seeing Emma so suddenly. “Come on. I’ll get one for you.”
Pulling my phone from my back pocket, I let Reggie know what I was up to, and headed towards the doors. Carissa leaned heavily against me as I manoeuvred through the throng, her scent wafting up to me. Pretty, but it did absolutely nothing for me. I got her outside, waited a few minutes for the Uber. When she tried to convince me again to come home with her, I contemplated the fact that my categorical refusal meant there was a good chance I was ruined for life. There was absolutely nothing wrong with this girl, beyond the fact that she just wasn’t for me, because I was already taken.
The Uber arrived and I poured Carissa into it, said good night and turned back to the bar. Emma was in there. Sweet, unattainable Emma. Nope, I couldn’t do it. I veered away, heading towards my truck. Time to go home, have a hot shower and jerk off to the memory of me and Emma, twenty feet from where I was standing right now, fucking each other like the hot young things we used to be.
CHAPTER16
Emma
Following Maya, Poppy, Hannah and Emilia to the other end of the bar, away from Jake, I was blinking back tears. I just wanted to turn around and go home. But that would be rude. I hadn’t been out with the girls from high school in forever and it was so sweet of Maya to invite me. And since we were also celebrating an award Poppy had just won for the bakery, it would be super shitty of me to just turn around and leave one minute after arriving. And I shouldn’t be reacting like this, anyway. My heart shouldn’t hurt so much. Jake could fuck whoever he wanted to, it was a free country. But itdidhurt, which in turn made me angry. Fucking furious, in fact.
We snagged a high table near the juke box just as another group was vacating it. Hannah had barely changed since high school, with her vibrant blue/green eyes and wild, curly blond hair. She was barely five foot three and as a mechanic, was lucky enough to spend her days surrounded by hot grease monkeys at the local repair shop. Then there was Emilia: between her spectacular figure, blonde hair and brown eyes, she looked like a beauty queen—which she used to be, actually. I wasn’t sure exactly what had happened there, because she never talked about it.
I turned around to sling my purse over the back of my chair, glancing up at the door just in time to see Jake shouldering through it, his arm around the waist of the girl who’d been all over him near the pool tables. My heart lurched so hard I thought I was going to be sick. When I turned back, Hannah said, “Whoa! Who’s pissed you off?”
“Huh? No one. Why?” I tried to bluff, knowing I’d failed miserably.
“You look super pissed off. Not gonna lie, I’m kinda intimidated,” Maya grinned.
