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Her lashes flutter as she pats my shoulder. It’s not so much a pat as it is a slow slide from the back of my shoulder, over my chest, giving my pec a rub for good measure. I drop my gaze so she can’t see the look on my face right now which is stuck somewhere between what the fuck and please don’t touch me.
When she walks away, I squint up at the sun, licking a bead of sweat off my top lip. It’s fucking sweltering out, but why wouldn’t it be? Noon in June. Shit, that rhymes.
“Why the fuck did we sit outside for lunch?” I complain.
Wyatt gives me a short, quiet chuckle, glancing down at his drink before back up at me. “Shit, you’re pretty wrecked, aren’t you?”
“What?”
“Pretty torn up over this Claire shit.” He waves his hand through the air, gesturing at me. “Never seen you so fucking grumpy. You’re like a teenage girl on her period.”
“I’m fine, and I don’t wanna talk about it.” I swirl my drink around, watching the ball of ice smack off the round glass. I put it down with a sigh. “It’s just that I don’t understand why this is so difficult for her, why she won’t admit how deep her feelings run, why she’s playing this off as if it’s nothing.”
I’d like to wipe Wyatt’s shit-eating grin right off his face. “Thought you didn’t wanna talk about it?” He blows out a breath. “And just how deep do your feelings run, Beck? Seems to me you might wanna be sure of that before you lure her into this, whatever this is with you.”
I sink back in my chair, staring him down. “Trust me, I’m sure of my feelings. Otherwise I would have given up on this chase a long time ago.”
Wyatt gives me an assessing once-over. “Ah. You’re in love with Claire.”
My eyes flip up to his, then drop back down to my drink. I don’t answer him, but I guess that alone is answer enough.
He taps a finger on the table, eyes never leaving mine. “Gotta say, I saw this coming from a mile away when you took off the first night to help Charlee find Claire when she fucked off with her ex.”
“No you didn’t,” I scoff.
His head bobs with a nod. “Did too. Normal-you would have said it wasn’t your problem. Instead, you jumped into action.” He sips at his drink. “So…I think you knew even then that this was gonna be something more with Claire.”
Did I? I mean, I knew Claire was different from the moment my gaze fell on her when she strolled into that bar, those green eyes floating around like she didn’t have a clue how to act in here. She turned nearly every damn head in the place without even trying, and truthfully, the attention made her a little bit uneasy, like she was confused why anybody would be interested in her.
I thought about Claire on and off all weekend after that. I wondered if she made it home okay, if she cried when she got into bed, if she gave that asshole another chance the next day. I wondered if she thought about me. And I wondered how the fuck I was going to find her again in a city with over six million people when all I knew was her first name.
And then fate had dropped me on her doorstep on the Monday morning. Or, rather, the doorstep of a brewery.
So yeah, maybe Wyatt is right. Maybe I knew right from the beginning that there was going to be more to Claire, more to us than sex, more than a one-night stand.
“I’m not ready to give up.” The words fall off my tongue at the same time the thought flits across my brain.
Wyatt simply lifts his shoulder. “Then don’t. Have you done everything you can?”
“I guess not, but…what more do I do? She told me to see other people.”
“You don’t believe she actually wants that, do you? Shit, look how she reacted when Sam kissed you at the birthday bash.”
“No, I don’t believe her at all. I don’t know why she would even suggest it.” But it hurts all the same. She won’t put a single bit of trust in me, in whatever this has the potential to be.
His brow quirks with amusement. “Really? You don’t know why?”
When I don’t answer, he groans, stretching his arms out over the table, head dipping like he can’t believe he needs to spell this out for me. “She just got out of a long-term relationship with someone she trusted after she found him balls-deep in someone else. You’re not exactly a saint and she knows that. Christ, you asked her to go back to your place and fuck when you’d known her for all of five minutes. She doesn’t want to get hurt again, Avery. She’s pushing you away before you can.”
“But I won’t—”
Wyatt holds up a hand. “I know that’s not your intention, and I bet deep down she knows that, too. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s on her mind. It happened once; it can happen again. I’m sure she’s just as upset about your fight as you are.”
Scrubbing my hands over my face, I laugh. It’s not a haha laugh, but more of a I can’t believe this is fucking happening laugh. “She fucking infuriates me, you know that? I took Sully for a walk late last night and found her getting man-handled on the street by a guy she didn’t know. She was trying to get away from him but he wasn’t giving up and she was drunk. She was fucking trashed, walking home alone in the middle of the night. How could she be so stupid? And what would have happened if I hadn’t been there and stepped in?”
Wyatt takes a drink with an audible, smacking sigh when he puts his glass down. “So, let me get this straight. You two had your big blowout, then she went out, probably with Charlee, and got absolutely wasted?”
“Right.”
