Well Played (Well Met #2)(85)

“It’s fine,” Mitch said. “We’ll sit in the back. They won’t notice us.”

But I wasn’t listening to reason, or anything, really, at that point. “They’re busy, you know? They’re working. I don’t even know where we’d find them. We can’t just—”

“Mitch? Hey, Mitch!” The three of us stopped walking and turned around. Mitch dropped my arm and smiled.

“Dex! Dude, how’s it going?” He went in for a fist bump, and after that they did that weirdly complicated handclasp thing that men did instead of just shaking hands like normal people. It was a cornucopia of kilted hotness, with Dex in his man bun and Mitch in his shirtlessness. Both with strong, broad backs and powerful legs, and I wasn’t interested in either one of them.

“Doing good, man, doing good. What are you doing here? This isn’t your Faire.” Dex laughed. “Couldn’t get enough this summer, right?”

“You know it.” Mitch’s laugh was a low and easy rumble, because what did that guy have to worry about? “No, we’re actually here to . . .” He glanced over his shoulder, and he raised his eyebrows at me. The message was clear: Should I ask?

But before I could use my own eyebrows to telegraph something back—like No, I’m chickening out, get us out of here immediately—Dex followed Mitch’s line of sight and spotted me. Dammit. “Hey, Stace.” He said my name easily, as though he hadn’t broken my heart outside a hotel room in Willow Creek a week ago, and sort-of apologized for it a couple days later.

“Hey.” The word came out as a wheeze, and I wasn’t even wearing a corset. I tried again, aiming for casual. “Hey. Dex. Hey. How’s it . . .”

“Seen Daniel around?” Mitch cut to the chase. God bless him.

“Oh, yeah.” Dex pointed at the stage. “He’s back there; just go around to the right to get to the backstage area. But you should go now. Show’s starting in a couple minutes.” He grinned at me. “About time you showed up. He said he’d never see you again, which is great because now he owes me twenty bucks.”

“There you go.” Mitch physically turned me around and sent me toward the stage with a little shove in the middle of my back. I walked away just as Dex turned toward April, his eyes alight with appreciation.

“Hey.” The word was pure speculation.

“Absolutely not.” I could practically hear April’s eye roll.

The Dueling Kilts were due to take the stage in four minutes, according to both my phone and the schedule on our map, and even though it was just the first show of the day, most of the benches were full of patrons, fanning themselves with their paper maps while they waited for the show to start. I skirted around the house right side of the audience, heading for a black-curtained doorway. I slipped through the curtain to find myself in a backstage area that was roughly the size of a broom closet. The curtain swung down behind me, obscuring me from the audience, and my breath stopped because there he was, half-bent over a cardboard box of Kilts merchandise. After heartbreak and farewell confessional emails and complete absence for days, Daniel was now barely five feet away from me. It was too sudden. It was too much.

He must have heard the choked sound my breath made, because he turned around and froze, looking as stunned as I felt. The stack of T-shirts in his arms fell back into the box. “Stacey,” he said. Or maybe he said. His voice seemed to be as strong as mine, which was to say, not very much at all.

“Hey.” My voice worked this time. Better than it had when I’d been talking to Dex, anyway. I should have known; everything about me was better with Daniel than it had ever been with Dex.

“What are you . . .” He shook his head a little while his eyes roamed over me, drinking me in like . . . well, like I was a cold glass of water on a day as hot as today. “How are you here?” he finally asked, his voice filled with something that sounded like wonder. He looked as though he wanted to smile, but didn’t know if he could just yet.

Now that the shock of seeing him was over, and now that I knew he wasn’t going to throw me out immediately, much of my nervousness fell away. I shrugged, as though I drove across the state to intercept the man I loved before he walked out of my life forever on a daily basis. “Got a ride.”

He didn’t respond, he just kept looking at me as if I were a mirage that might disappear, and I remembered that I had more to say. I took a breath that was more shake than inhale, but it would have to do. “You were wrong about something.”

“I was?” His brow furrowed, and his expression became guarded. I could practically see his shoulders tense up as he braced himself for whatever onslaught I was going to throw his way.

“Yeah.” I tried for a smile, but it wasn’t coming yet. “You said you didn’t have anything to offer me. That I wouldn’t want a life on the road with you. But—”

“Look out, coming through!” Dex pushed through the curtain and bumped me in the back, driving me straight into Daniel. His hands went to my hips instinctively, steadying me, and I barely caught Dex’s smile as he walked past us and onto the stage. “Sorry,” he said over his shoulder at us. “Gotta start the show.”

I watched Dex go and then, as much as I hated to leave Daniel’s embrace, I took a step back and tugged on his arm. “Come on,” I said, nodding toward the black curtain he’d just come through. “Is there somewhere we can go? Someplace a little quieter, so we can . . .”