Needing Happily Ever After - Elena Aitken Page 0,55

a response, but turned and fled the kitchen. She was furious and hurt and so completely confused. But those feelings were going to have to wait. First, she needed to find her husband.

Chapter Fourteen

Damon only vaguely heard his friends, and Nick, who no doubt was even more confused than the rest of them, call out as he pushed his way through the crowd and out into the parking lot. He pulled his truck keys out of his pocket and immediately shoved them back in. He’d had way too much to drink to get behind the wheel.

Fuck.

He looked around—for what, he didn’t know. But he had to get out of there before—

“Damon!”

Shit.

Katie was both the only person, and the last person, he wanted to see.

“You’re not driving.”

She stormed across the parking lot and put herself between him and the truck. Her face was flushed and with her breath coming in short bursts and her hands on her hips, Damon couldn’t help but think about how sexy she looked, despite the fact that she looked royally pissed off.

And guilty?

He was a little too far over the line of intoxicated to tell the difference. But she should feel guilty. After all, he had just found her getting cozy with another man.

“I know, Katie. I’m not going to—”

“Here.” She held out her hand for the truck keys. “I’ll drive.”

Damon glanced behind him at the bar, but neither of them had any intention of going back inside. That much was clear.

He gave her the keys and walked past her to the passenger side door.

The drive back to ElkView was quiet and tense, the air between them full of everything they probably should have been saying to each other.

He looked out the window and watched the dark landscape pass by in a blur, questioning his choices.

Why had he wanted to come back to Glacier Falls in the first place? Did he make a mistake? Was marrying Katie a mistake? Or was it falling in love with her that had been the mistake?

Love.

The word hit him in the gut. Did he really love her? Like, love her love her?

Was that why he was acting like such an idiot?

It was. He knew it.

Seeing her with another man…it was too much. It had brought out a reaction in him that he couldn’t even begin to explain, let alone contain. Was that love?

Maybe not. But everything else…that was love. He knew it. He felt it.

Didn’t he?

And even if he did…what about her? Did Katie love him?

He knew the answer to that, too.

No.

His head swirled with the combination of the questions and the alcohol that flowed through him. He wasn’t the type of man to give up. He never gave up on what he wanted.

Damon glanced over at Katie behind the wheel of his truck.

Why should it be any different now?

He wanted Katie, and he’d be damned if he was going to give up that easily.

He’d had too much to drink. That was clear.

She needed to talk to him and clear up what had just happened back there. She risked a glance over at him in the passenger seat. Damon stared out the window, a hard line set on his mouth, his forehead wrinkled as if he were in deep thought. And maybe he was. But he was also drunk.

Katie shook her head and focused on the road. She needed to talk to him, desperately. But there was no point in bringing anything up in his condition.

Nothing good would come from that.

Instead, Katie pressed her own lips into a hard line and tried to ignore the tension between them as she drove them home in silence.

The best thing they could do was just get to bed, so Damon could sleep off whatever he’d had to drink and maybe Katie would have a chance to process the swirl of feelings that more and more were consuming her thoughts.

“Okay, Damon.” She finally spoke as she unlocked the front door. “I think maybe if—”

He cut her off by wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her in through the door into the cottage.

“What are you doing?”

He pressed her up against the wall and it was clear to both of them exactly what he was doing. Her body reacted immediately to him, an instinctual response, but she could smell the whisky on his breath. It reminded her of what had happened and exactly why it was a better idea just to go to bed.

“You know what I’m doing.” He leaned in and breathed heavy