Chapter 28 #2
Kendra throws an arm around me. “Girl, yes! It’s mostly Reeve’s boss being a dick and Reeve not doing anything about it.
” There’s a noticeable slur to her words.
“I swear to god the guy used to be able to say no, but the last year it’s been like anything his boss wants, Reeve does it—no questions asked.
I just hope he never gets asked to, like, bury a body. ”
“Okay, that’s enough of that for tonight.” Keshe pries Kendra’s arm off me and steers her toward the dance floor. Keshe holds out her other hand to me. “Why don’t we all go dance for a little bit?”
I shake my head. “I’m going to sit this one out. I’ll wait for the guys.”
“We’ll be out there if you change your mind.” Keshe pulls Kendra into the crowd. I watch them go until the sea of dancing bodies swallows them.
I close my eyes and try to get lost in the music, but Kendra’s words keep playing over and over in my head: Anything his boss wants, Reeve does it—no questions asked.
It makes me wonder what his boss has asked of him with the dance hall.
Then it makes me wonder if his boss has asked anything of him with me.
I shake my head as if the motion will erase that thought.
You know Reeve, I tell myself. He is a good guy. He isn’t like that.
But if Kendra’s right and Reeve took someone to a wedding to close a deal, that would mean Reeve is very much like that.
Before that terrible thought entirely takes hold, a warm hand slides along my hip bone.
“I am ready to get out of here.” Reeve’s breath is hot in my ear. “What about you?”
I nod, all of a sudden very much done with this place. “Should we go say goodbye?” I think of Kendra and Keshe on the dance floor, but Reeve shakes his head.
“I’m known for my Irish exits.” He smiles. “It hasn’t been a good night if I don’t slip out without a trace. Come on.”
He takes my hand, leading me toward the coat check, then, once we have our coats, out the front door and onto the sidewalk.
A fresh layer of snow has turned into a wet gray slush from the steady stream of passing cars.
“It’s a busy night,” says Reeve, looking down the street. “We may need to walk to the corner to get a cab.” He reaches for my hand.
“That’s fine.” I pretend not to see him do it, folding my arms across my chest, feigning cold.
They stay there as we run across the street and onto the opposite curb, where I am so caught up in thinking about what Kendra told me that I fail to see the thin sheet of ice when I step onto the sidewalk.
My feet come out from under me. My arms, still crossed, splay a fraction of a second too late. I plummet hard toward the pavement, but just before I hit, Reeve’s arms grab hold of me. “Whoa. Are you okay?” he asks as the world rights itself again, and I catch my breath.
I nod, leaning into him until my feet find their footing again and I can stand.
When I do, he pulls me to his chest, his arms coming around me tightly.
“I think that scared me almost as much as it did you. Are you sure you’re all right?”
I’m not.
Although my body has recovered, I’m still reeling from the emotional whiplash of the last few minutes.
I want to ask him about all those terrible thoughts that began to take shape inside the bar.
I want to know if I’m just another way to impress his boss. The key to his next promotion.
“Are you dating me so I’ll sell you the dance hall?” I say, not able to keep it in any longer.
His smile disappears. “What? Of course not. Why would you think that?”
My voice takes on a cool tone I didn’t know it was capable of. “Because you’ve done it before. Your friends told me you took some guy’s daughter to a wedding as part of a business deal.”
He pulls back, his expression confused until it clears, and he closes his eyes and groans. “Jesus, Kendra.”
It’s not what I wanted to hear.
“Okay…” I draw out the word, and his eyes fly open.
“No,” he says. “It wasn’t like that.”
I wait to hear what it was like then.
“She was the daughter of a client whose property we were trying to buy,” he explains. “We met at a business dinner at my boss’s house. She asked if I would go with her.”
The adrenaline draining from my body is leaving me surprisingly bold. “And you thought, what? I’ll lead this poor girl on and hopefully land the deal in the process?”
He steps toward me, his hands reaching for mine then backing off at the last second.
“I don’t want to lie to you, Jules. Yeah, I agreed to go because I knew it would make my boss happy.
But before I even said yes, I made it very clear to her that I wasn’t interested in her romantically.
She said she felt the same. She lived on the West Coast and didn’t know anyone attending the wedding besides her parents.
All she wanted was someone her age to hang out with. ”
“Okay.” I suddenly regret this whole conversation. “I shouldn’t have brought it up. Let’s just go.”
I move to walk past him, but he steps in front of me, blocking my path. “No, wait. Ask me what we talked about.”
I don’t want to know anymore. I’m tired, and I’m cold, and I want to be doing anything but this.
“It’s fine,” I tell him. “It’s really none of my business. I don’t need to know.”
“You do, Jules.” His voice is suddenly raw. “Ask me what.”
I have to blink a few times before I can meet his eyes. “What did you talk about?”
He swallows, the intensity of his gaze never breaking with mine.
“Well, she talked about her girlfriend. They’d only been together for three months, but she was sure she was the one.
And I talked about how I’d just been up in West Lake and run into this woman I never thought I’d see again and how I couldn’t stop thinking about her. ”
I stop breathing completely.
“I told her about the dock,” he continues. “And how it was one of the best nights of my life. How some bad luck prevented it from being more than just a night, and how I fell even harder when I finally found her again, and she called me a creep and poured beer down my pants.”
I breathe now. It’s a staggering breath followed by a quick, short laugh.
“I’m serious.” He steps closer, taking both my hands in his. “How I feel has nothing to do with my job. I haven’t stopped thinking about you since that night, even when you still hated me.”
I shake my head. “I never hated you. I just didn’t trust you.”
“Do you trust me now?”
I hesitate.
He reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out his phone.
“I will call Howard right now and tell him I can’t work on the West Lake project anymore.
” He taps on the screen and then scrolls, and when he holds out his phone to me again, Howard Mansfield’s name is on the screen.
“I want this deal to happen for you. But if I have to choose between the deal and you knowing where my intentions lie, I choose you, Jules. I want you to know you can trust me.”
There’s a way out here. I leave. I go home. I go back to being the girl I was before Reeve came along. Chalk all of this up to another lesson on how hope in the wrong hands always ends in hurt. I can do it. I’ve done it once before.
But just like before, I’d be lying to myself. I’d be pretending I don’t want him when, in truth, I haven’t stopped thinking about him since that night on the dock, either.
“I trust you,” I finally say. The relief is a shared emotion, vibrating back and forth along the invisible string between us.
His arms come around me. I tuck my head under his chin. The comforting warmth of his body and the feeling that things are really good right now give me a full-blown body shudder.
“Are you cold?” He leans back to study my face.
“Not really. I think that was more like an emotional exorcism. It’s been a really big day. A good one,” I clarify.
“We should get back then.” He looks around for a cab. “You’re probably exhausted.”
He reaches for my hand, and when he takes it, another emotion surfaces from earlier. “Actually, Reeve, I’m not tired at all.”