I’m doing. I know I’m a little bit crazy and in over my head. I know how wrong this is, how risky it is, how if I’m not careful, it’s poised to fail in a way I’ll never get out of. I’m just driven by this obsessive, debilitating need to make Gautier go away, to erase my whole past, to erase everything I was and start anew. I need it in order to breathe, to live. I can’t spend my days in fear—the only thing that has kept me going since I left is the very fact that I planned to take care of him. That’s probably the only reason I’m alive.
“Uh-oh, you’re going to the dark place,” Pascal says, getting to his feet and grabbing me by the elbows, hauling me up. “There’s only one way out of the dark place.”
“You know about the dark place?” I ask, almost whispering, and it’s then that I realize, holy fuck, I’m drunk as a skunk.
“I’m the mayor of the dark place,” he tells me. He leads me away from the bar to the middle of the dance floor, which is just a patch of sand with disco lights on it. There’s no one else around. The bar is empty except for the DJ and the bartender.
“A few more songs, down tempo,” Pascal yells at the DJ. “You know I’ll make it worth your while.”
The DJ shrugs and puts on a new track, something with a very heavy, low beat.
“This is how we get out of it,” Pascal says to me, wrapping his arms around my lower back and holding me close to him, his lips going for my ear. “This time we can get out of it together,” he murmurs, and I feel a rush shoot down into my core.
This is a bad idea.
This is danger.
Or maybe I’m the dangerous one?
“Put on some Rüfüs Du Sol,” Pascal yells at the DJ. Then he smiles down at me. Lopsided, kind of sweet. I think I’m seeing double of him. “And you, you put your arms around me.”
I do as I’m told.
As he holds me tight, his hard-on pressed against my thigh, I put my arms around his neck and let him grind into me, moving to the music with each heavy, bass-loaded beat.
This feels nice.
Not just the evidence of how much he wants me but the way our bodies meld together so seamlessly. It doesn’t feel awkward. It feels real. Like all this time, this was what was supposed to happen.
“Do I dare ask what’s going on in that head of yours?” he says, his forehead resting against mine as we sway.
I close my eyes and drift with the movement. “I’m not quite sure myself.”
Everything starts to get just a little bit swimmy, a little bit dizzy. My feet feel like they’re sticking to the sand.
I sink into his arms.
Down.
Down.
Down.
CHAPTER TEN
PASCAL
Ow. Oh God. My head.
Motherfucking Manuel.
That Spanish bastard should have cut us off when he had the chance. All that extra brandy in the sangria is creating a punishing jackhammer in my head that triples in pain every time I open my eyes.
I should have stuck to whiskey.
But whiskey didn’t feel right last night. I wanted to drink whatever Gabrielle was drinking, and I wanted her to enjoy it. Seeing her enjoy something has given me life.
The moment she stepped off the plane in Palma, it was like seeing the sunrise for the first time. She just lit up from within, and every bit of darkness that hid in her deepest parts was banished away, if only for a few moments.
It caught me off guard a few times, stole the breath from my lungs, made me feel something I’d never felt before. Something for her. It was in her smile, the way she literally let her hair down in the car and let it dance free and messy and wild.
I want to be the man who makes her like that on his own. I want her free and messy and wild in my bed. I want to see that sunrise again, that blinding light, to feel the joy move through her.
Last night, I was sure that was going to happen.
It wasn’t my plan, per se.
Yes, I was trying to woo her. Impress her, at any rate. If we’d ended up having sex, that would have been an added bonus. My main goal was just to get her to open up to me, to let me see the things she deems too dark