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“Can I get a beer?”
“Sure, where’re those cute babies at?” She dipped to grab the glass bottle and then popped the cap off, handing it to me.
“At home in bed.” I took the beer and handed over a ten, not wanting to do small talk or divulge the actual whereabouts of my kids.
Tanya’s red nails slid over the cash, and then her eyes were darting around.
“Lacey was in here earlier. Not that she’ll come back, but I wanted to give you a heads- up.” My stomach nearly bottomed out at the mention of my ex. It wasn’t uncommon to run into people who saw her or even knew her. There were only a handful of times over the past few years we’d ever actually been in the same place at the same time, but every time she saw me, she’d act like I left her, crying and causing a scene.
I didn’t want that tonight.
“Thanks, Tanya.”
I turned and leaned against the bar, scanning the floor as an unfamiliar feeling began to thrum through me. Colson’s words played in my head, tugging at different pieces of my pride. Haley was young, and I had lived nearly a whole life before she’d even graduated from high school. I was married once. Fuck, I had three kids.
But what good did it do me to play by the rules, or do what people said I should? That landed me here, divorced and broke, all alone on a Wednesday night with a bright pink hair tie on my wrist because I forgot that I was holding it for Mila earlier.
Society seemed to have this perfect blueprint of what our lives should look like. What marriage and happiness should imitate. But how long until we all acknowledged that the image they gave us was fucked? The cookie-cutter picture of a perfect house, happy dad and mom with that picket fence, was nothing but a piece of barbed wire wrapped around our society, cutting off all our oxygen and turning us all into judgmental assholes.
Love didn’t look like that.
Happiness wasn’t the laminated bullshit image they kept perpetuating, demonizing anything and anyone who didn’t do it the way they said.
The beer was sour on my tongue as I swallowed and stewed over this idea of Haley. Of what I should do instead of what I wanted.
Why did the two have to look different? I wanted to fuck her, so I should.
I wanted to date her, wake up to her. Shit, it was deeper than just wanting to sink inside her. Maybe that’s what was giving me pause?
This was more serious than some fling. Ilikedher.
Her smile made something flutter in my chest. When I knew she’d be somewhere my adrenaline would spike. She was funny and bright. Brilliant, in fact, and while I knew she had already conquered the business world, she seemed shy and insecure when she’d bake or learn something new. Not to mention the way my daughters completely adored her; that was enough to have me thinking about her long after she’d left.
I wasn’t really looking for Haley, but the song changed and the crowd on the floor parted, then there she was. Her hips caught my attention first, because they were swaying with the music, and there were two hands attached to them, holding her while she danced.
Her hand went up into her hair, shoving half of it off her face, revealing her slender neck and how deep the tank top dipped into her cleavage.
JefferyfuckingAkers stood behind her, moving with her as the music played and the beat dropped into something seductive and sultry. He pulled her closer to his chest until there wasn’t any space left between their bodies.
Rage spiked in my chest, and it spiraled into something dangerous and out of control. This wasn’t going to work. I couldn’t be here and watch this. I couldn’t see him touch her.
If I were a calm man, the kind that didn’t have fury in my veins or a darkness that was always present, urging me to hit something, I would walk away. I’d get in my truck and drive home, turn on a game, and enjoy my first kid-free evening, in I didn’t even know how long.
Instead, I set the beer bottle down and moved.
My eyes stayed on her as she adjusted herself so that there was space between her and Jeffery now. But she was still smiling up at him, and his left hand was still on her hip. Her shirt had risen up, so part of her stomach was showing, and it shouldn’t matter. She wasn’t mine.
Yet that seemed to be the only thing my brain was screaming at me as I wandered closer.
Mylips.
Myhips.
Myass.
Myhair.
I bypassed couples dancing, cut through another until a guy yelled at my back, but I only had eyes for her.
