to be able to say exactly what I want to say, I have to feel confident enough in myself and my desirability as a woman to say it.
Almost as if my fairy godmother waved a magic wand, an idea pops into my head and I fire off a text to Julia Spencer.
If I want Blaine as more than my friend, I have to go and get him. But do I? I search my heart and when all is said and done, I do. At the very least, I want to be honest with him and myself and I want to try. Now isn’t the time to falter or be wishy-washy in my desires or intentions. I’m a smart, independent woman who knows what she wants.
And despite everything that’s happened over the past few weeks, I still want my man. With that decision firmly in my rearview, the world becomes a wind tunnel sucking all the air from my lungs and taunting me with the possibility of another failure.
With my happily ever after on the line, I pray to God that Julia will help me.
Chapter Twenty
Blaine
“Dude, try one of these new ranch wings, they’re to die for.”
Kane holds out the chicken, and I take one just to appease him. Sometimes it’s better to give in than have him start yammering at me. After the well-deserved cold shoulder I got from Cora at her school, I’ve been pretty depressed. God, I should have pulled her aside after that night at the steakhouse. But I was letting fear of losing everything lead me around by the nose again. I tried to ignore this invite, but in the end, Max won out. Just like Cora told me at career day, she’s coming tonight—Sue-Ann made sure of it—so I’m gonna have to grow a pair and have ‘the talk.’ I have to tell Cora that I want another chance with her. A chance at the brass ring.
What if she doesn’t want you? What if you’ve already ruined it all?
I flick the voice of reason off my shoulder and steel my spine. It’s not that I don’t want to define it. It’s because I can’t define it. Like what in the hell is it? We’re not friends anymore. We’re not lovers. We’re more like exes with a bad sexual past. We’re the people who see each other in the grocery store and go down opposite aisles buying anchovies we’ll never eat and twenty-four packs of toilet paper as bad memories plague our brains.
And that just sucks.
But I don’t want to go back to the way it was, and I don’t know how to move forward. I’m stuck in the muddy middle with her. The woman who’s my everything. And I need to start treating her like she is.
I’m so mad at myself because what I was afraid was going to happen is what actually happened. That damned if you do and damned if you don’t figure of speech? Yeah, that.
Kane lets out a low whistle. “Holy. Fucking. Shit. I’m gonna tap that. Everybody back off, I called it first.”
“Where?” Max asks, craning his neck.
Kane points with a wing as he chews, and then gestures to his crotch. “Hot chick, come to Papa. I got a piece of meat you can suck the sauce right off of.”
“You are gross and disrespectful,” Dylan says, smacking him on the arm, which earns him an answering snort but not much else. “Watch yourself. If you wouldn’t say it around your mother, don’t say it around other women.”
At the ruckus, I turn and watch the woman saunter toward us. The heat is palpable. It’s like my mind is the depot and two trains of lust are smacking together in a fiery wreck.
Silky long hair falling to a waist I can span with my hands. Check.
Ample cleavage escaping the deep plunge of her skin-tight red dress. Check.
Sky-high, strappy black stilettos encasing shapely bare legs. Check.
With my heart squeezing behind my ribs, our gazes tangle and all the breath escapes my lungs. Those crystal blue orbs search mine until I’m a stammering, blubbering fool who can’t even tell you my own name.
And contacts when she usually wears glasses she likes to tug on. Triple check.
Jaw, meet the motherfucking floor.
Without even looking, I slap the hot wing out of Kane’s hand, and it lands with a plop in the blue cheese. “That. Is. Mine.”
Kane’s voice cracks. “What the hell, Rice? You don’t even know that chick.”
Dylan chuckles and jabs him in the ribs again.