so she doubted she was going to until she completed her mission.
It was necessary. Actually, she was just angry it had taken Gage’s appearance in town to push her to this point. It was easy for her to fling accusations at him, to say that her life was ticking along just fine and he had come and disrupted it. But, she had to admit—at least to herself—that even when he wasn’t here, he had control over what she did. Because she allowed the scars to control what she did.
She was over it. And she wasn’t going to wait for someone special, or some other crap. She wasn’t in the market for a relationship. She never had been. Which was a huge part of why she’d never slept with a guy. Because, even though she knew that it wasn’t like it had to mean anything or be special, it had always kind of seemed like it should. But, she had also never really wanted anything special. Depending on another human being was her worst nightmare. Needing someone—when there was no guarantee at all that they would stay—just wasn’t something she’d ever wanted. That put relationships low on her list of priorities.
But sex had suddenly been bumped higher on the list. She wasn’t going to be a virgin for the rest of her life—that meant that she was going to have to rip off the Band-Aid at some point. So, virginity Band-Aid was going. Now.
Though, based on things she had heard over the years, unlike taking a Band-Aid off, she doubted that doing it quickly would make it hurt less.
She gritted her teeth, scanning the bar. She should have stopped for condoms. She was making assumptions that the guy that she decided on would have them. Actually, she probably didn’t want to choose a guy that didn’t have them, because that would imply a lack of sex preparedness. If she were looking for a relationship, she might want the kind of guy who didn’t carry protection around. But she wasn’t looking for a relationship, she was looking for a guy who knew what he was doing.
A guy that made her feel even a fraction of what Gage had made her feel. A guy who could, at least, keep the fire going, even if he hadn’t started it himself.
She looked across the room, her heart doing a strange dip and twist when she spotted Finn Donnelly. He was hot, there was no doubt about that. Tall, broad and well muscled from days spent working on his family ranch.
Not the most approachable guy, but sexy. So that was a bonus.
She chewed her bottom lip. He also knew her, and was very good friends with Lane. Lane insisted that there was nothing between them, nothing romantic at all. Finn was just the guy who changed her lightbulbs so that she didn’t have to get up on a ladder, the guy who fixed up her place if there were any issues.
In fact, when pressed, Lane always looked mortally offended by the assertion that she might have latent Finn feelings.
Rebecca bit her lip, crossing the room to where Finn was standing. “Hi,” she said.
He looked up from his beer, a dark brow raised, the left side of his lips quirked upward. “Hi, Rebecca. Are you here with Lane?”
“No,” she said.
“Oh,” he said. He lifted his beer, taking a sip of it, and Rebecca wondered if she had miscalculated. She wondered if maybe he had some feelings for Lane, regardless of what Lane said about him.
She cleared her throat, bouncing uncomfortably on the balls of her feet, not knowing what to say next. Finn was hot, but she didn’t exactly want to touch him or anything. And she didn’t know if that was because of the specter of her friend looming over them, or the potential consequences because of his close relationship to her friend, or what. Maybe it was just chemistry, and the cruelty thereof.
Because Finn was not the kind of guy to do serious relationships, so he would be perfect for her purposes, if not for all the other entanglements. Small-town ridiculousness.
“You can have a seat if you want,” he said, gesturing to the empty chair across from him.
“No,” she said. “I mean, are you waiting for someone?”
Something shifted in his expression, his lip quirking at a slightly different angle, the light in his whiskey-colored eyes flickering. “No.”
The air stretched between them, and she was suddenly fighting to catch her breath. She sensed that this was