AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Hendrix held his hand out, palm up, and his eyes locked with mine. “Either you dance with me or I get up on that table and dance by myself.”
I shook my head.No. Just, no.
Evan cleared his throat, reminding me he was still there.
“Your call,” Hendrix said with a shrug, then he turned on his heel.
“Wait.”
He stopped at the sound of my voice, straightening his shoulders but not fully turning back around.
Okay, so we were doing the groveling thing now. I threw my head back and heaved a sigh. Reluctantly, I walked up to Hendrix, hooking my index finger in the waistband of his shorts to get his attention. “We dancing or what?”
He turned around and took my hand. He never stopped smiling, not for one second. He pulled me close and rocked into me.God bless.“I didn’t mean what I said about Channing Tatum over there. What you do and who you do it with is your business. I overstepped.”
“Chris. His name is Chris.”
“His name could be Thor, King of Thick Dicklandia, and it wouldn’t matter. He’s still a prick.”
“Hendrix…”
“Sorry.” He spun me around, pulling my back against his chest. He held one of my hands at his side and guided the swaying rhythm of our bodies. “I don’t want to fight with you, Ken. Not about this.”
I leaned my head back against his shoulder, causing him to look down at me from behind. “I don’t want to fight with you, either.”Ever. Not about this. Not about anything. Can we just go back to the way we were?
Sooner or later we would have to talk about what this was. We needed to talk about what happened. We couldn’t keep pretending it didn’t exist. We couldn’t keep falling back into that comfortable place where we’d always been like the foundation of that ground hadn’t been shaken.
I knew it.
He knew it.
He inhaled deeply through his nose, like he was trying to figure out if I’d changed shampoo or something. I had. Shopping hazard of buying your stuff from TJ Maxx. Fall in love with one brand, and never see it on the shelf again.
His thumb traced a path from my elbow to my wrist.
His face came closer to mine, just an inch, but enough to make everything else fade away, enough to make me shiver, enough to make me wonder about that line.
His breath danced along the side of my face. “You left me.”
Everything inside me sank to the pit of my stomach. My words caught in my throat.
“Don’t ever do that again,” he added.
My heart hammered. I took a deep breath to get it under control, but it didn’t work. Nothing worked. He’d pulled me in like he always had. Like washing my hair or brushing my teeth, Hendrix was a habit I didn’t want to break. I wanted this. I wantedhim.
Whatever was happening between us was terrifying, but the thought of losing him again was worse. Over the last five days, I’d read our old text message threads a dozen times. I’d listened to old voicemails he’d left me and scrolled through all the photos of him—of us—on my phone. I turned Taylor on full blast in my car and sang right along with her, not caring a single bit what the guy beside me at the red light thought. And I’d cried myself to sleep until my pillow was stained with tears and dried mascara. At one point during the week, Holmes had even told me if I didn’t fuck him and get this over with, then she would. The minute I reacted with a‘You would not,’instead of my usual‘Go ahead and try,’she laughed and yelled,‘I knew it! I fucking knew it.’Then she told me this was unacceptable, that Hendrix and I were the glue that held our little mini gang together. She told me we weren’t allowed to fall apart. And I took that shit to heart because that was about as heartfelt as it ever got with Holmes.
I wasn’t going to let us fall apart.
I turned around and looked him in the eye. “You scared me.”
His hands cupped my face. “You think I wasn’t scared?”
Here goes nothing.
“You brought us to a place you knew we could never come back from.” I played my part, sure, but there was no way I was taking all the blame.
He raised his voice. That muscle I loved so much ticked in his jaw. “And running from me was the answer? Two fucking years, Ken. You’ve been gone two years.”
