Bait (Wake, #1)(116)

My husband turned and faced him.

I wrenched my arm free and went to stand in between them choosing to face Casey as he advanced. I was introduced to a vein in his forehead that I'd never seen before. He looked almost homicidal.

Grant’s chest heaved as he stood behind me, snaking an arm around my waist, maybe to steady himself, maybe to hold on to me. “You don't know her! You don’t f*cking know what she thinks,” Grant yelled.

I tried desperately to make Casey's eyes meet mine, but they bore into the man behind me. “Grant, you need to calm down. We're at my brother's wedding.” His voice was firm and more rational than he had to be feeling. I'd heard this shouting voice before. I'd heard him yell and scream over much less.

My body reacted to this voice. But when didn’t my body react to Casey?

Then he added, “And I don't recommend you put your hands on her like that again.”

“I wouldn't hurt Blake.” That was the truth. He really wouldn't, the Grant I knew wouldn't.

“I know you wouldn't, because I would know.”

There it was.

“Stop, Casey.” I breathed, my words were discreet. “Please.”

He looked down to me.

I saw flashes of my life with Casey fire off in my mind. The laughing. The playing. The sex. The want.

He said, “This is our chance, honeybee. Do it.”

“Don't look at her like that!” Grant snarled, interrupting the publicly private conversation Casey and I were having. “Take your f*cking eyes off her. Let’s. Go.” Grant tried to turn me again and I moved with him.

“My eyes are the only thing I haven't taken off her,” Casey said, not far enough under his breath.

We heard.

“Liar!” Grant spun and lunged for Casey.

He lost his footing and grabbed for Casey, snagging Casey’s shirt, his momentum sent him past his target and Grant fell to the bar floor.

I looked up at Aly, who stood next to Nate at the bar. Nate held a hand up to Cory, who was ready to step in, telling him to hold off.

Grant laid there, the fall jolting his clarity some. He shook his head, having landed pretty hard.

Casey looking down at him. Only feet from these two men, my hands covered my ears as if I was trying to teleport away from there. I quickly realized that this place, this bar, Hook Line and Sinker, really loved to f*ck with my life.

Grant made an attempt to stand up and, for some reason, Casey leaned down to help him. It was the most peculiar of things. Something flitted across Grant’s face. He blinked slowly, over and over, fixated on one spot.

“Betty,” he said and the air sucked from my lungs. “Your tattoo says Betty,” said Grant pulling his hand free of the charity he'd been offered. “Betty. BETTY!”

Grant got up and hurriedly walked past me without even looking, knocking onto a few chairs as he passed. I didn’t know exactly what had just happened.

When I looked back at Casey, his shirt was spread and the buttons ripped off like I'd seen it many times. One side was untucked and it was flapped open. Across his chest in a script that almost looked like a ribbon, it read, “Betty. Mine.”

His body language changed. He, too, looked betrayed.

He said, “I guess he knows Betty, too. I didn't even have to tell him. You did.”

He snickered and strode past me.

One door. Two men. Three minutes and I simply stood there.

Maybe it was longer.

The music started back up. The hustle and bustle resumed.

I couldn't turn around.

I had to go forward.

I saw Casey talking to a driver across the street and then get into the back of one of the cars Cory and Micah hired to get their guests safely into their beds.

I kept walking. I walk past the unmoving car, predicting that he'd roll down the window and say something.

He didn't. The car pulled away as I made it to the other side of the street.

I stayed the course. Keeping my word that I wouldn't go to him until I could be all his and he could be mine.

I needed to hit the situation head on. And head on took me straight into the hotel’s elevator. I went up one floor higher, and to the opposite side of the building from the room where I’d let the proverbial cat get killed by curiosity, less than two years prior.

The argument we played out was new to Grant, but not to me. It was almost line-by-line of one of the many variations I'd rehearsed in my head over and over throughout the past few years.

This was the one where he asked me if it was true and I couldn’t say anything.

He pleaded, “Just say it isn't true and then it isn't!”

The truth blurred. The lies blurred.

“I'm sorry,” I said, and watched him drink a bottle of water, while packing his clothes.

“Why? Why, Blake. Why?” He'd said the word nothing short of ninety times.

“I wish I knew.” Hello truth.

“How long?” he asked and stopped his packing to watch me with complete focus.

“So long,” I confessed.

“So long?” He began packing once more, going into the bathroom and collecting his shaving kit and deodorant, not stowing them like he normally would. Instead of dutifully securing them in the mesh pocket under the lid of his suitcase, he just threw them in.