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“I’ll take off tonight. You need to get out a little.”
I tear apart a roll from the basket in the table’s center. “You don’t have to do that. Judging by how many girls I saw you leave with back in the day, I assume I’m already cutting into your—well, I’m not going to call it ‘dating,’ but whatever it is. And as I recall, you start getting cranky if you go for more than twenty-four hours without it.”
He chuckles, a low laugh I’m not sure he even means for me to hear. “I assure you I’m still not going long without it.”
My stomach tightens. I’ve got no business being bothered by that, but I am, just a little. “Gross. That’s more than I need to know.”
“I just don’t want you worrying about myneeds,” he says. “I wouldn’t take off work if I didn’t want to. So let’s try something small. We can just eat dinner out. Baby steps.”
I offer an ambivalent shrug.
But I smile as I raise my menu again.
* * *
He gets home around seven,appraising me in that way of his.
Tonight, I went for the rocker chick look—tall black boots, tiny skirt, leather jacket. It was never Caleb’s favorite style, but it was Beck’s. I quietly relish his obvious approval, even if I shouldn’t.
“It’s kind of far,” he says. He hands me a helmet, a challenge in his eyes.
“I’m not scared.”
His gaze lands on my mouth for a moment, lingers before he turns and walks out to his bike. “Figured you’d say that.”
The ride takes us nearly a half hour, a half hour in which my heart speeds then soars as we skirt around cars and take corners too fast. I probably should be terrified, but I feel safe with him.
“Do I have helmet hair?” I ask as I step off the bike.
His gaze sweeps over me. “You’ve got eighties rock video hair. You look like you should be slithering naked over someone’s Ferrari.”
I raise a brow as he turns toward the restaurant. “It’s agoodthing, Evil Queen,” he says.
I fight a smile. “I’m fine with being the evil queen as long as I’m thehotevil queen.”
“Mission accomplished,” he mutters, holding the door.
Inside, the restaurant is surprisingly nice—floor-to-ceiling windows, candlelight. It’s the first not-fast-food place I’ve entered in at least eight months, other than the bar, which is weird even to me. I lost a huge swath of my life to drugs, and a huge swath of it recovering from them. Who goes nearly a full year without entering a restaurant?
I don’t want to lose any more of it.I really, really don’t.
Our waitress asks if we’d like a drink. I order a soda and Beck asks for water when I know he wants bourbon.
Ugh.
“You can drink, you know,” I grumble. “I’m not some kind of vampire who can’t help myself. Drinking isn’t even my issue.”
He studies me. “We have a thirty-minute drive home over a very windy, narrow road, and I’m the one responsible for getting us there in one piece.That’swhy I’m not drinking.”
“You could still have a drink. I mean—” I gesture in his direction, “you’re massive.”
“If anything happened to you,” he replies, his voice low and gravelly, “I would never forgive myself.”
My heart gives a hard thud. That’s Beck in a nutshell. He lives alone and does his best to eschew any connection to another human being, but he cares more aboutmethan anyone else ever has, even Caleb. I’m not sure why that care of his sort of hurts, why I have to stare at the menu and act as if I haven’t heard him.
“I want the steak. I want the Chicken Milanese. I want the pot pie. I’m never going to be able to choose.”
“Pick one and I’ll get the other so you can try it,” he says. “And then I’ll end up eating all of mine and take half of yours.”
