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“Don’t get involved, girls,” Elliot tells us. “Not worth it.”
Charlie sits back in the wingback chair, his eyes already slightly glazed. “He’s right. It’s Elliot’s birthday. Enjoy your night. Let them do the thing they do.”
Megan and I look at one another, our uncertainty mirrored.
“Let’s give them five minutes. See if they can manage a conversation.”
Megan nods, agreeing as she takes my arm and pulls me down onto the sofa.
“You ladies are late,” Elliot complains, but my attention shamelessly gravitates to Lance, who’s already looking at me.
His eyes blaze across my skin like a lost ember starved in the firelight, desperately searching for a place to settle on me.
The green in his eyes seems to only grow brighter the further they travel. Until they lock with my own.
I tilt my head, wondering how he can be so blatant in front of our friends. In front of me when just weeks ago he was—
“I miss all of those things, you know… Everything.”
I’d sent flowers to his office this week and heard nothing back. Not that I expected anything… but I wanted something. A call… or maybe a message telling me what giant idiots we both were last year and that he still wants me.
God, I’m pathetic.
“How are you, Lance?” I snap, instantly wondering what depths of my audacity I’ve pulled it from.
His head tilts, gauging my changed mood. “I’m good.”
“Just good?”
“Miserable. He’s been miserable.” Elliot chuckles, knocking back the last of his whiskey.
“Still?” I question.
I feel Megan blanch at my side. Maybe my questions are coming off a little left field, considering Lance and I rarely have anything to say to one another.
“I said I’m good,” he reaffirms, his eyes pinching into thin slits as he watches me.
And it’s only now that I allow myself to fully see him, with no distractions like when I walked in here. Too afraid to give him a second glance in case I saw it—felt it. That pull, like a rope bound between us. The same pull I had in the elevator that first day. At the gala. On the lake. In my bedroom. The list… it’s endless.
And there’s no way he doesn’t feel it, too.
His eyes will always give him away.
Only it’s not just that feeling consuming me now. No, I feel a little pissed off. Because not only did the man make me feel a pull stronger than anything I’ve ever experienced, but he cut the rope I’d been clinging to so fast I fell hard on my ass.
“Girls, can we dance?” Nina pulls my attention away from him, her stare wide and telling as she looks at us across the table.
“We’re dancing.” I stand with Megan and walk with the two girls toward the dance floor.
My brother whisked Nina away from the dance floor over an hour ago. Megan and I didn’t have the heart to stop them, deciding we’ll deal with the wrath of Nina tomorrow. The two of us are climbing down from the platform we’re dancing on, sweaty and in desperate need of a drink, when Lance approaches us. He reaches out and hands Megan a glass first and then me.
“I need to pee,” Megan tells me, handing me the full drink as she slips away. “Thank you, Lance.”
He shakes his head after her, then twists back to me.
“Thanks,” I tell him, sipping the vodka and cranberry mixer.
He just watches me as if he can’t take his eyes off me. “You’re welcome.”
