Chapter 2
Bryn
“I think you need to go out there and find him,” Jordan croons, staring at me through the mirror in the women’s restroom. “That’s the kind of fun you need in your life, even if it’s just for a night.”
“I have fun in my life,” I defend, my mind drifting to the unfinished puzzle on Gran’s dining room table.
“You sound like Nate before he met Savanna,” she says, leaning over the counter to reapply her lipstick. “Remember when he had no fun because he was all work and no play?”
“I’m not all work,” I scoff, flicking my wet hands in her direction. She jumps, nearly swiping her lipstick between her lip and nose.
Dabbing her lips with the pad of her pinky, she rubs them together, makes a popping sound, then stands up straight and turns towards me. “Gran does not count as fun.”
“But she is fun.”
“C’mon, Bryn. Go out there and find him again. Steal his cowboy hat.”
Exasperated, I throw my hands in the air before tearing off a piece of paper towel from the dispenser. “You do not just steal a cowboy’s hat, Jor. Are you crazy?”
She shrugs. “Liam thinks it’s adorable when I steal his hat.”
“Have you never heard the whole ‘wear the hat, ride the cowboy’ thing?”
I grew up on a winery north of San Francisco in Sonoma. It wasn’t exactly ranching land, but we had stables and there were enough cowboys and cowboy wannabes that I learned hat etiquette early.
Jor cocks her head to the side, long, chocolate brown hair sliding down the length of her arm. “No?”
“Girl, I know you’ve been to this bar before, and you’ve never heard this? If you take a cowboy’s hat, you’re basically saying you want to ride him.”
“Huh.” Jordan face twists, dumbstruck. “You think that applies to baseball hats, too? Think Liam knows that rule?”
“It’s Liam. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit.”
“Maybe that’s why he likes it. You know, come to think of it, he does get handsy after I take it from him, but I always thought it was because he thought it looked sexy.”
“It’s Liam. You could be covered in slime wearing a mumu and he’d think you were sexy.”
Jordan thinks about it for a moment, then shrugs noncommittally. She knows I’m right. She’d be hard-pressed to find anything that man didn’t find sexy on her.
“Okay, fine,” she says, grabbing hold of my cheeks, and pinching them between her thumb and forefinger. “Don’t steal his hat. But go find him.”
Pulling away from her with a scrunch of my nose, I rub at my cheeks. They were rosy enough with the alcohol coursing through my bloodstream. Or maybe the blush that annoyingly crept in since I ran into the cowboy.
“Maybe.”
Jordan makes a disgusted sound, then sighs, grabbing my hand. “You’re hopeless, my girl.”
A pang of hurt stabs me square in the chest, killing every feel-good endorphin rushing through me. Hopeless. How many times has that word been hurled at me? Not that Jordan could have known that. It’s not something I parade around.
“I know,” I mutter, tugging her towards the door before she can pick up on the shift in my mood.
We plunge back into the darkness of the club.
She didn’t know. She didn’t know. She didn’t know. I repeat the words in my head, willing them into my heart, to keep the crack from widening any further. It was just a word, anyway, right? It didn’t mean anything. It shouldn’t hold any power over me. And yet…
Oh Brynleigh, why are you so hopeless?
How did I end up with someone so hopeless, Brynleigh?
Brynleigh, I don’t understand how you can be so hopeless.
Movement catches my attention out of the corner of my eye. This time I see him coming as we both move into the same space.
“Hi,” the nameless cowboy drawls, a dimple appearing in his right cheek when his lips tilt up.
There’s no swoop of my stomach. No blush staining my cheeks. Just panic threatening to rise in my chest that one of my friends thinks the same of me as—
I muster up what I can of a smile. It’s probably more grimace, making me look constipated, but it’s all I can manage. “Hi.”
He tips his head to me, then glances over my shoulder to Jordan at my back, who is squeezing my hand so tight I’ll be surprised if it isn’t broken in the morning.
Encouraging me, but she has no idea that I don’t want any encouragement now.
I just want to go get a drink, check the time, and see if maybe I can call a cab early, feigning illness.
The cowboy’s eyes drift back to me, scanning my face. Whatever he sees there has his smile faltering. Not completely, but enough that I notice it.
“I was going to do this whole getting in your way thing again, on purpose this time. And then dance back and forth as we tried to dodge each other,” he says, projecting his voice over the music. “But I think I’ll skip all that and just ask if I can buy you a drink.”
I open my mouth to decline, but Jordan pushes me towards him. “Yes! She will. Absolutely she will. She was just saying in the bathroom how thirsty she is.”
The look I throw over my shoulder must say enough because the smile she gives me is bordering on innocent, though her eyes twinkle with slyness.
She mouths a “what?!”, but I just shake my head and turn back to the man before me, trying not to think about how the choice was taken away from me.
It does nothing for the rising panic, but I do my best to shove it down.
My lips form a tight line that is less welcoming than he deserves. “Sure.”
He glances to Jordan once more, then back to me, suspicion swimming in his eyes. “If you’re here with your girls tonight—”
“No.” The word comes out quicker than I expect, and this time I force a smile. It isn’t this man’s fault that I was triggered in the bathroom by my past. Wasn’t Jordan’s fault either. “I mean, I am here with the girls. But Jordan’s right. I do need a drink. I would love it if you bought me one.”
The sparkle that had dimmed in his eyes lights up again, his megawatt grin nearly blinding me. With it this big, the dimple on the right deepens, but it’s the one on his left cheek that wasn’t there earlier that I’m drawn to.
“I’m Wyatt,” he says, holding out a hand between us.
“Bryn.”
His hand is warm, all encompassing around my own, rough calluses pushing into my softness.
Something in my chest eases. He’s gentle with his handshake, but it’s full of confidence.
I get the sense that if he were shaking anyone else’s hand, his grip would be firmer, the contact quicker.
He lingers, though, my hand in his, and now I’m breathless for a completely different reason.
The longer he stares at me, the calmer my heart becomes, the panic ebbing.
“Where are you ladies hanging out?” Wyatt asks, leaning towards me, still maintaining the contact of our hands. The electricity of his touch sends tingles up my arm, through my chest, straight down to my belly where it pools with warmth.
I point towards our table, and he glances in the direction before his gaze shifts across the dance floor.
Finally, he looks back at me, winks, and with my hand firmly in his, makes a path through the throng of people, Jordan still at my back.
Wyatt keeps my hand near his side, directing me with a little pressure this way or that, wherever he needs to take us to get through the crowd.
Not once does someone bump into me. Not once do I need to squeeze through a small little opening between people.
He simply parts the crowd, people moving for him.
It might be the singlehandedly sexiest thing a man has ever done for me.
Jordan squeezes my other hand when we get close to the table and then breaks away to go join the girls. I tug on Wyatt’s hand, and when he glances over his shoulder at me, I nod in the direction Jordan went, his eyes tracking her down. He nods and pulls me to the bar directly across from them.
“You can see them, they can see you,” he says, bowing his body to be heard over the music. It’s louder here than it was near the restrooms. “And once I buy you a drink, you can make a fast getaway if you want. Though I hope you don’t.”
There’s a teasing glint in his eye as he eases back from me, and I fight not to match his contagious grin, glancing down at the ground between us. He said nothing, but I can’t help feeling that he sensed my panic. Absurd, considering I met him five seconds ago.
“If you’re buying me a drink with the hopes I’ll sleep with you, I’ll tell you now that I don’t sleep with strangers.”
His eyebrows shoot up beneath his cowboy hat, and a second later he laughs, the sound carrying over the speakers, rich and velvety. A soft caress to my brain compared to the music.
“Neither do I,” he says, flagging down a bartender. “I have a strict three-date rule.”
It’s my turn for my eyebrows to rise. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not. What are you having?”
He gestures towards the bartender, his bicep flexing beneath the tight sleeves.
The ear of a cougar disappears beneath the fabric, but the rest of the full-bodied cat is on display, a mountain scene rising and falling within the tattoo as it moves down his lower arm.
The face of a wolf stares back at me, and I’m not sure if it’s Wyatt’s flexing or the wolf’s haunting eyes that take my breath away.
The ink is beautiful, and mesmerizing, and I’m almost distracted enough that I don’t give the bartender my order.
“Jack and Coke,” I tell the man on the other side of the counter. “And a water, please.”
Wyatt holds up two fingers, doubling the order, then turns his attention back to me. “A woman after my own heart. Jack and Coke, my favorite besides straight whiskey.”
“Neat or on the rocks?”
“Double, neat.”
“Double. On the rocks,” I counter. “It’s how my grandpa taught me to drink it.” I get enjoyment at the surprise that lights up his eyes. Eyes that I’ve determined are green by the light of the bar. “Do you really have a three-date rule?”