The Bromance Book Club (Bromance Book Club, #1)(59)

Which. Wow. He swayed with a natural rhythm that took her breath away. Of course, most athletes had good body control, but that didn’t mean they could actually dance. She’d seen enough dugout dance-offs to know that most baseball players left their skills on the field. But Gavin? Wow. Where’d he been hiding this?

“Do you regret not having a real w-wedding?” he asked after a moment of quiet swaying.

“We did have a real wedding.”

“You know what I mean. A big wedding.”

Her gut twisted. This was dangerous territory as far as conversations went. “Not really. Do you?”

“I didn’t used to, but now I think I’d like to have the memory of you walking down the aisle in a white dress.”

“It’s just a dress.”

“This isn’t just a dress.” His hand splayed across her back. Her heart raced. The flirting that had bothered her so much last week was giving her warm fluttery feelings tonight, and that was not good. She stared at his shoulder to avoid his eyes.

“What about a honeymoon?” he murmured.

“What about it?” This was definitely venturing into dangerous territory. Thea focused on her steps, her breathing.

“I regret not having one of those,” Gavin said playfully, rubbing the pad of his thumb suggestively across her low back.

Thea coughed. “Where would you have wanted to go?”

“Someplace warm where you could walk around in a bikini all day.”

Laughter bubbled up, unbidden. “I haven’t worn a bikini since the girls were born.”

“I know. It’s a source of great d-disappointment for me.”

They danced in silence for a beat, but then he spoke again. “If we’d had a w-wedding, w-would you have had your dad walk you down the aisle?”

Thea swallowed and closed her eyes. She didn’t want to think about that bastard right now. Not when she was all tangled up in other confusing emotions. And that kind of question was why she shouldn’t have opened the door to the conversation at all.

“Talk to me, Thea,” he said against her hair.

“Why does any of this matter?”

“Because you matter.”

Thea shook her head. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “It seems like the kind of a thing a man should have to earn, not just expect to be able to do.”

Gavin tugged her closer. “He didn’t earn it.”

“No. He definitely did not.”

They danced in silence for several minutes after that. Thea’s body chronicled every way his body brushed and molded against hers. He bent his head and kissed the top of hers.

“Why don’t you want to go to the wedding?” he asked quietly.

For some reason, she answered. “Because I can’t stand to watch another young, na?ve woman get scammed into believing that she’s the one who will change him, that she’s the one who will make him stay. He won’t. He’ll leave her, because that’s what he does. He leaves.”



* * *



? ? ?

The ride home was silent.

Not tense silent. Just . . . weird silent. All night, they’d existed in a sated, peaceful void, avoiding the unpleasant, lumbering elephants between them. So much unresolved unpleasantness had been blissfully forgotten for one night.

Gavin pulled into the driveway and killed the engine. Neither of them moved to get out, though.

“I had fun tonight,” he said.

Thea didn’t want to admit that she had too, so she said nothing. What good would it do to encourage him with false hope? Once they exited the dark haven of the car, the jungle of reality would unleash the trumpeting herds, and no amount of missing and wishing for things to be different would chase them off.

Gavin cleared his throat. “So . . .”

Thea looked over at him. “So?”

“Since this is a date,” he started. “Do I get to kiss you in the car before I walk you inside?”

Air seeped from her lungs. “Is that what people do on dates? I’ve forgotten.”

“I remember doing a lot more than that in a car with you,” he said, his voice husky.

Thea’s cheeks got hot. “You know that’s probably the night I got pregnant, right?”

“I always w-wondered.” The heavy-lidded way he looked at her suggested he had wondered but didn’t particularly care; he just liked the memory and wouldn’t mind making a new one.

Which was why the smart thing to do would be to get out of the car now.

But she wasn’t feeling very smart. She was just feeling. “Yes,” she murmured.

“Yes?” he repeated.

She looked at his lips.

A happy sound rose from Gavin’s chest as he claimed her mouth. This wasn’t like before. This wasn’t like the kiss from the kitchen or the one the night he moved home. This kiss was no explosion of passion, but it was every bit as shattering. Who knew there could be such volatility in such tender pressure? This was a kiss that required a slow breath through her nose and a strong grip on her seat. The kind of kiss that told her she was going to be in trouble if they kept up this charade of dating.

Gavin adjusted the angle of his mouth and brushed her lips once, twice, a third time. Then he pulled back and gazed down at her, a half smile lifting the corner of his mouth.