Foreplay (The Ivy Chronicles #1)(34)

I bristled at this, especially the way he said it—like the last thing he considered me to be anymore was nice. “You don’t know me.” No one did.

“Yeah. The spoiled little college girl didn’t like what she was hearing so she ran away.”

Okay, maybe that was partly true. But I wasn’t spoiled.

Ultimately, he was calling me a coward. Weak. A small voice whispered through my mind like a chill wind: Isn’t that what you do? What you’ve done all your life? Ever since Mom dumped you? Run. Hide. Bury yourself away from the world. Obsess over a boy who doesn’t know you exist. At least not in the way you want to exist for him. Pretend you belong to a family that isn’t yours.

My eyes started to burn from the cruel barrage of thoughts. I sucked a breath into my squeezing-tight lungs and held my ground, refusing to run away again just because the conversation wasn’t going my way. “I came here to apologize.”

He stared at me for a long moment, ignoring the girl who stepped up in front of him, money clutched in her hand. She stared at him expectantly, but he continued to look at me. She finally moved on to another bartender.

I twisted my fingers together until they were numb and bloodless. “I’d heard rumors about your brother. I had a description of him . . . and just assumed it was you that first night. Maybe I wanted it to be you. After you helped me with my car that night, I wanted it to be you,” I admitted with a single nod.

He continued to stare at me, doing nothing to ease my embarrassment.

I kept talking. “It was dumb. I’m sorry. I came here looking for . . .” I couldn’t say it. It was just too mortifying.

He crossed his arms over his chest, waiting. It was an intimidating pose. No one approached him at the bar looking like that. They took one look at him, looking at me, and swerved for another bartender. Maybe I should have turned away, too.

Except I had come here to do this.

“I—” Stopping, I gathered my breath, my courage, and plunged ahead: “There’s this guy I’ve liked forever, and I’m not exactly experienced, but I thought it would help if I could gain some experience from someone who knows what he’s doing. You know. If I could be better at . . . at stuff. The intimate stuff. All the girl-guy action.” I released my fingers and motioned between me and him.

There. I’d said it. And it sounded every bit as bad as I thought it would.

I met his gaze head on, hoping the fact that I was shaking inside didn’t show on the outside.

He revealed nothing. It was as though my words made no impact on him whatsoever. He was like some kind of stoic, hard-faced soldier staring down the enemy. Only that enemy was me.

Finally, he spoke. “So you’re saying you’re looking for a f*ck buddy?”

I felt as much as saw a guy beside me swing his attention toward me. “Sweet.” He leaned in, his shoulder brushing mine.

“W-what?” I stammered. “No!”

Reece swung his hard stare on the other guy. “Get. Lost. Now.”

The guy held up both hands defensively and backed away.

I inhaled again, fighting for composure. I’d said enough. I apologized. I did what I came here for. I could leave now. “I just wanted to say I was sorry.”

Turning, I moved back through the bar, making a line for the table where Emerson and Georgia waited. I hoped they didn’t want to stay. I just wanted to go home. The embarrassment was still there, but like a Band-Aid ripped off, the sting was already fading. Hopefully by tomorrow I wouldn’t feel it at all. All of this would be a dim memory. My time hanging out at Mulvaney’s had come to an end. For some reason, that idea gave me another sting.

The girls spotted me and waved me over, their eyes bright with questions. They paid very little notice to the guys working so hard for their attention as I explained how the conversation with Reece had gone. Suddenly Emerson’s gaze drifted just beyond my shoulder. Her eyes grew huge in her face.

I swiveled around at the exact moment Reece reached me. I opened my mouth and started to say something over the pulsing din of the bar. I’m not even sure what I meant to say because his hand wrapping around mine shoved every thought out of my head. Speech was impossible.





Chapter 12

His strong fingers surrounded mine while his gaze scanned my face, scrutinizing me, searching me in a way that made me squirm.

The room throbbed noisily in my ears. A glass broke near the bar and he didn’t even look that way. Without a word, he turned, pulling me after him. I marveled at how bodies seemed to part for him. He didn’t even use his elbows. He simply cut through the crowd.

“Where are we going?” I shouted at his back, recovering my voice.

He didn’t even glance behind him. And yet I knew he heard me. His fingers tightened ever so slightly around my hand.

A horrible thought seized me. As we passed the long length of bar and stepped onto the ramp that led into the smaller back room where food was served, I gave voice to it. “Are you throwing me out?”

As mortifying as that would be, he could do that. He worked here, after all. Would he? Had it come to that?

We approached the counter where a girl in the classic Mulvaney’s T-shirt scrawled orders onto a notepad and then stuck the slips of paper behind her onto a spinner for the cooks.

The line for food was much shorter than the line for drinks, but a few people waited there already, eager for a burger to go with their beer. We bypassed them. Reece lifted the countertop and pulled me after him. The girl taking food orders looked up.