with every touch. I was acutely aware of his presence as he and Dane watched us from a distance. Good—distance was good. We had nothing to say to each other.
Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw him head my way, looking determined. Nope. No way. Before I could run, Addie appeared at my side.
She stood in front of me, bronze skin glowing in the firelight, dark brown eyes narrowed and aimed at Jesse, her hand up, warding him off. “Hey! Don’t you look at her!” she yelled at him. “You don’t get to talk to her again, not after the way you treated her this morning.”
Jesse flinched, but he tried to get around her just the same. “Lila, can we… I just want to talk to you.”
Eves joined us and Addie proceeded to repeat loudly how Jesse had been a dick to me in her café.
Murder flared in Eves’s eyes. “Where the hell do you get off?” she growled, poking him in the chest repeatedly. “Haven’t you hurt her enough? You don’t get to come back and do it again, Riff.”
His gaze sliced to me, and I wanted to dissolve. Eves meant well, but I was trying to be all hard and tough and cool, and she was throwing me under the bus, revealing way too much in her attempt to defend me.
Trix and Quinn closed in as well, then Dane.
I wanted to hide.
My flight instincts kicked in and I bolted across the yard, somehow not falling on my face as I headed for the house.
“Lila, shit. Wait,” Jesse called.
The thump of his boots pounded after me. Eves yelled at him to leave me alone. Trix and Addie adding their two cents. I picked up the pace, running through the back door and straight to the bathroom. I shoved the door closed—
His big hand caught it before it could close completely, and he stepped inside with me, then shut us in together and threw the lock.
Crap.
Chapter Six
Jesse
The lock clicking into place was loud in the small room.
I turned, looking down at a scowling Lila. “Now, Bambi…”
“Nope. No. Let me out. We have nothing to talk about.”
I dragged my hand over my head and down my beard. “Yeah, we do.”
“Well, I don’t want to talk to you.” She tried to take a step back, but there was nowhere to go.
Everly banged on the bathroom door. “You okay, Lila?”
“I’m fine. I’ll be right out,” Lila said, glaring at me.
The banging stopped.
“We’ll be right out here if you need us,” Eves said.
I wanted to yell fuck off, badly, but being a dick to Dane’s girl, or any of Lila’s friends, would be a dumb move. Plus, I liked them, all of them. Unfortunately, right now they were getting in the way of me talking to my girl and it was pissing me off.
She’s not your girl.
Everly’s words from outside echoed through my head. “I hurt you when I left.”
She lifted her chin and shoved her glasses up her nose. That simple, familiar gesture made me want to kiss her even more. The fact that she was in only her bra with her tight ass-hugging jeans wasn’t helping.
“You didn’t. I’m fine. You did me a favor.”
She was lying. “For fuck’s sake, can we talk about this?”
She threw her hands up, making her tits—wrapped in only a scrap of purple lace—jiggle. It was distracting as hell. “What’s the point, Jesse?”
It took every bit of my self-control not to touch her. Watching her dance around the bonfire, her sexy, curvy, little body moving, bouncing, jiggling, had nearly killed me. Could you die from a hard-on? I was starting to think you could.
She crossed her arms, which only lifted her soft, full tits higher. My mouth watered at the sight of all that smooth, creamy flesh. The outline of her nipples was clear through her bra, and I wanted to bend forward and shove my face against those gorgeous soft mounds and stay there for the rest of my life.
“Stop it,” she hissed.
I glanced up at her. “What?”
“Looking at me like that.” She colored, turning a pretty shade of pink that crept down her neck.
“You’re standing there in a bra, Bambi, where the fuck else am I going to look?”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re so full of it. You certainly didn’t have trouble resisting my boobs the last time you saw them.”
I didn’t like remembering that night, what little I could remember of it, which wasn’t much. “I was wasted.”
She smiled, and there was