Book Lovers(30)

“You said it, not me,” I reply.

He lifts a brow. “You’re scrappy tonight.”

“I’m always scrappy,” I say. “Tonight I’m just not bothering to hide it.”

“Good.” He leans in, dropping his voice, and an electric current charges through me. “I’ve always preferred to have things out in the open. Though the pig farmers of Sunshine Falls might not feel the same way.”

His gaze flicks sidelong toward mine, his scent vaguely spicy and familiar. An unwelcome heaviness settles between my thighs. I really hope my chin divot hasn’t found a way to announce that I’m turned on.

“I already told you,” I say. “I’m here for my sister.”

And as much anxiety as I feel being away from home, the truth is, I spend the length of Libby’s pregnancies in a low-grade panic anyway. At least this way I can keep an eye on her.

I never dreamed of having my own kids, but the way I felt during Libby’s first pregnancy really sealed the deal. There are just too many things that can go wrong, too many ways to fail.

I pitch myself onto a stool at the corner of the bar and almost fall over in the process.

Charlie catches my arms and steadies me. “How about some water?” he says, sliding onto the empty stool beside mine, that suppressed smirk/pout/what-even-is-this tugging his full lips slightly to one side as he signals to the bartender.

I square my shoulders, trying for dignified. “You’re not going to distract me.”

His brow lifts. “From?”

“I won one of those games. You owe me information.” Especially given the horrifying amount I just blurted out.

His head tilts, and he peers down his face at me. “What do you want to know?”

Our lunch two years ago pops into my head, Charlie’s irritated glance at his watch. “You said you were trying to catch a flight the day we met. Why?”

He scratches at his collar, his brow furrowing, jaw etched with tension. “The same reason I’m here now.”

“Intriguing.”

“I promise it’s not.” Waters have appeared on the bar. He turns one in place, his jaw tensing. “My dad had a stroke. One back then, and another a few months ago. I’m here to help.”

“Shit. I—wow.” Immediately, my vision clears and sharpens on him, my buzz burning off. “You were so . . . together.”

“I made a commitment to be there,” he says, with a defensive edge, “and I didn’t see how talking about it would be productive.”

“I wasn’t saying—look, I’d gotten dumped like forty-six seconds earlier, and I still sat down for a martini and a salad with a perfect stranger, so I get it.”

Charlie’s eyes snag on mine, so intense I have to look away for a second.

“Was he—is your dad okay?”

He turns his glass again. “When we had lunch, I already knew he wasn’t in danger. My sister had just told me about the stroke, but it actually happened weeks earlier.” His face hardens. “He decided I didn’t need to know, and that was that.” He shifts on his stool—the discomfort of someone who’s just decided he’s overshared.

Even factoring in the gin and beer sloshing around in my body, I’m shocked to hear myself blurt, “Our dad left us when my mom was pregnant. I don’t really remember him. After that, it was pretty much a parade of loser boyfriends, so I’m not really an expert on dads.”

Charlie’s brows pinch, his fingers stilling on his damp glass. “Sounds terrible.”

“It wasn’t too bad,” I say. “She never let most of them meet us. She was good about that.” I reach for my glass, trying his tic, turning it in a ring of its own sweat. “But one day, she’d be floating on a cloud, singing her favorite Hello, Dolly! songs and fluffing embroidered thrift-store pillows like Snow White in New York, and the next—”

I don’t trail off so much as just outright cut myself off.

I’m not ashamed of my upbringing, but the more you tell a person about yourself, the more power you hand over. And I particularly avoid sharing Mom with strangers, like the memory of her is a newspaper clipping and every time I take it out, she fades and creases a little more.

Charlie’s thumb slides over my wrist absently. “Stephens?”

“I don’t need you to feel sorry for me.”

His pupils dilate. “I wouldn’t dare.” A dare is exactly what his voice sounds like.

At some point, we’ve drawn together, my legs tucked between his again, an endless, buzzing feedback loop everywhere we’re touching. His eyes are heavy on me, his pupils almost blotting out his irises, a lustrous ring of honey around a deep, dark pit.

Heat gathers between my thighs, and I uncross and recross my legs. Charlie’s eyes drop to follow the motion, and his water glass hitches against his bottom lip, like he’s forgotten what he was doing. In that moment, he is one hundred percent legible to me.

I might as well be looking into a mirror.

I could lean into him.

I could let my knees slide further into the pocket between his, or touch his arm, or tip my chin up, and in any of those hypothetical scenarios, we end up kissing. I may not like him all that much, but a not insignificant part of me is dying to know what his bottom lip feels like, how that hand on my wrist would touch me.