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“What’s going on?” Aaron asks.
I finish my wine.
“Um, Tyler, I’m assuming you met my best friend, Liv.”
I’m gonna kill her. She couldn’t hide me, could she? There’s nothing good about this. Not at all.
I turn around and give him a wry smile. “Surprise.”
Tyler displays no outward signs of shock as his eyes meet mine and send a jolt down my spine. “I like surprises,” he says with a grin.
I like surprises. I like flowers turning up at my door, I like birthday presents, and I like it when my best friend surprises me with a girls’ weekend. I don’t like surprises like this.
Not that Tyler isn’t a nice surprise. He is. He’s very pretty to look at. Okay, he’s fucking incredible to look at. And touch. And taste. And think totally inappropriate thoughts about. He’s a nice surprise when he doesn’t come with an aura of danger and a grin that tugs at my addictive personality.
I mean, really. He has a dimple. Every girl likes to look at a guy with a dimple.
I slide my empty glass to Dayton and she fills it without speaking. First sign of addiction: rationalization of your actions. It’s not okay for his grin to affect me just because of his dimple.
I drink the wine and set the glass down.
Aaron catches my eye. “I think I’m missing something.”
“You and me both, brother,” I mutter under my breath. Like, normality.
Dayton purses her lips to hold in her laughter, and I know she caught it.
“Aaron, honey, don’t you and Ty have business to deal with?”
“Nope,” Tyler answers. “All done at the office.”
Dayton sets her jaw. “Are you sure you don’t?” She gives them a look that would melt the Arctic.
“You know,” Aaron replies, “I think I do have a contract for you to look over in the office.”
He grabs Tyler’s arm and steers him in the direction of his home office, and I watch as they disappear. Damn, Tyler has a nice butt.
I mean, what? No. Jesus, Liv.
Tyler glances back at me and smirks when he sees me watching him. I take a deep breath and look into my best friend’s eyes. I shake my head, and worry reflects in her eyes.
“Twice? And now this?”
“Yep.”
“Are you gonna be okay?” She grabs my hand.
The problem with best friends is that they know everything about you. Dayton knows everything about me, about every last one of my rotting skeletons I keep locked away in a foolproof safe.
But as she and Aaron discovered, skeletons don’t stay buried for long.
She’s seen me in my deepest, darkest moments, and I’m seeing the fear of that in her eyes now.
“I’m fine, okay? I’ll be okay.” I take a deep breath. “It’s normal to think about someone and be attracted to them, especially when they look like that.” My eyes cut to the door and her lips twitch. “But being attracted to someone doesn’t mean it’s anything more. It doesn’t mean I’m addicted. It’s just the…desire to be. It’s the temptation to give in to it. But I’m stronger now and I won’t.”
“I just don’t want to see you get hurt again. I don’t want you to hurt.” Her eyes are clear and honest. “He’s not the kind of person you need, Liv. Trust me. You need someone soft and stable and calm. Tyler isn’t that guy.”
I know. I know that just from sex, and that’s why he’s dangerous. The problem is, I don’t think someone soft and stable is what I need either.
