Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
I want to kiss him , she thought as he opened her car door for her and offered his arm—like a tattooed gentleman—to walk her to the fancy restaurant’s entrance. I want to devour his lips and lick his face and tattoo my name on his chin .
Thea had never felt so possessive and giddy and visceral and ardently about anyone before in her life. She had loved Alec, but the spark had dimmed somewhere along the line of breaking up and getting back together over the years.
There was something about a man proving he could live without her that rubbed her the wrong way. Maybe it was obnoxious and silly—and definitely stemmed from a childhood of sometimes being ignored—but she wanted her partner to feel like time away from her was the equivalent of a chainsaw to the chest. Fatal.
She wanted a partner who jumped on her if they spent several days apart, like one of those reunions of a soldier returning home to his golden retriever. Pure joy and excitement.
Her mind rushed back to the way she watched Draven touch himself and how she swore his lips mouthed her name. Late that night, she had laid awake, grinding her pussy against the heel of her hand as she replayed Draven’s chest heaving with breaths and his thighs trembling from his release.
New flames danced over Thea’s pores, keeping a blush warming her cheeks anytime she looked him in the eyes. Thankfully, the restaurant was chilly; hopefully, that would help deter her body and brain from thinking dirty thoughts.
Draven’s big, warm palm on her lower back, guiding her through the waiting room, did not help deter the dirty thoughts.
As Draven greeted the hostess and told her about the reservation, Thea watched his polite, neutral face. It didn’t glow; he didn’t smirk; his eyes didn’t sparkle with flirtatious promises. He doesn’t look at other people the way he looks at me . That was a good sign, right? But why was he holding back?
A single golden candle lit their intimate area when they sat at their table. Thea grabbed the drink menu and pointed to what she wanted. When a waitress came, Draven ordered for both of them. And when the waitress leaned way further down than she needed to, Draven did not even glance at the woman’s overflowing cleavage.
Draven pulled his phone out from across the table and motioned for Thea to do the same. She pulled it out of her purse, and a few seconds later, it vibrated in her hand.
Draven texted her, “ When was the last time you came to a place like this? Maybe with Wall Street guy? ”
She rolled her eyes and bit back a smile. “ Alec did not work on Wall Street. We live in L.A., not NY, dummy .”
She hit send and began typing again. “ I don’t go to restaurants very often. Servers don’t know sign language, and I don’t always like the expression I get from people when I point at what I want on the menu. They act like I’m being rude for not trying to say it out loud .”
He frowned from across the table. “ That happens a lot ?”
“ One time, I signed to a waitress that I was deaf, and she brought me a menu in braille .” Thea added the face-palming emoji.
Draven pursed his lips, seeming not at all pleased by that. “ I hate that anyone has ever made you feel unaccepted .”
Her heart warmed—stuck in an oven, which Draven mastered the temperature controls.
“ Is it upsetting to you when I order for us? ” Draven texted, “ I don’t want to ever make it seem like you can’t do something yourself .”
Heart toasting to a crisp now . “ Draven, it’s hard to imagine you upsetting me .”
He dramatically put a hand over his chest and gaped. “ This is coming from the same woman who turned my thermostat down to fifty-eight degrees just to get me to put on a shirt? ” he texted.
She giggled and messaged back, “ I’ve become much more comfortable with your shirtless-ness .”
Draven read her text and looked back at her with narrowed eyes and a smolder that twisted her lungs. His heated expression turned her organs to stretchable taffy. A single cocky, arched eyebrow rose at her statement. “ Oh, reeaaalllyyy? ” he texted.
“ Really .”
“ Because ,” he replied, “ I’ve been thinking about establishing our apartment as a topless apartment. Legally. Like some French beaches .”
She snorted at his joke, and his answering grin shot giddy hormones through her.
After the first glass of wine, Draven ordered their meals for them. When she pointed at the manicotti, he frowned and pointed at the lobster. She texted, “ I am allergic to shellfish. I just wanted to see if you’d still agree to pay for it .” He chuckled.
The dinner was going great. Then, ten minutes into waiting for their food, Draven made some off-handed joke about Alec, and Thea texted, “ I’ve been thinking about meeting him for coffee. Maybe this week .”
Draven’s eyebrows furrowed; his lips pressed into a thin line as he read her message. “ Fucking why? ” he sent back.
Bristling, she wrote, “ Because we were together for years and he deserves closure .”
“ HE deserves closure? ”
Frowning back, she typed, “ Yes .”
“ You already have your closure? ” Draven texted.
Pausing for just a moment, Thea nodded. She had fallen out of love with Alec before the cheating scandal, but her family and friends loved him. She would have stayed with him had he been faithful to her. I would have settled . All to make other people happy.
“ Then, why the hell do you need to meet up with him? He cheated. He doesn’t deserve closure .”
“ Drave n…”
“ You are not meeting up with him, Thea .”
Her spine straightened at the command. It reminded her too much of when her parents made active decisions in her life and told her to follow them mindlessly.
“ You can’t tell me what to do, Draven .”
They must have looked like quite a pair, texting furiously back and forth at the five-star restaurant.
“ If you try to meet him somewhere, I will hide all of your shoes ,” Draven messaged with a straight face. “ Are you going to meet him without any shoes? ”
“ You’re really that immature and stubborn? ” she questioned.
“ I was already thinking about hiding all your underwear, Thea. Your shoes would be an easy feat .”
His humor did nothing to cut through this new tension. After living under the roof of over-protective and controlling parents, she despised being told what to do. There was being underestimated, and then there was being treated like a subordinate. It’s demeaning . “ You wouldn’t ,” she texted.
“ Don’t test me ,” he shot back. “ Do not see that prick. You’ll let him apologize and forgive him and go back to him, and he doesn’t deserve you .”
Her mouth opened, and she sucked in a lungful of air at his words. Her thumbs jabbed at her phone as she typed. “ That’s the type of person you think I am? Such a people pleaser, so weak-willed, that I could be cheated on—with a close friend—and still go back to that person? ”
Draven glowered at the message.
That was how he saw her? After everything, he thought she could be “talked into” falling back in Alec’s arms?
What hurt the most was that she worried he was right. If she had never moved in with Draven, if she had accepted her family’s calls about how perfect Alec was for her, how they were a match, if she had taken another boring finance job and continued down the path of making everyone else happy, Thea might have gone back to Alec.
She might have never hoped for anything more.
Draven doesn’t see me the way I thought he did .
“ Thea, I didn’t mean it like that ,” he messaged.
She typed, “ I’m not hungry anymore .”
“ The food will be out any minute. We already ordered .”
She texted, “ I don’t want to sit at this table with you a minute longer .”
She watched as something shattered in Draven’s expression. Something broke behind those light green eyes.
She shook her head.
The thing about being “quiet” was that shallow people saw that as her entire personality. Was she a wallflower? No. But people thought they could walk over her like disrespected dandelions in a field.
I don’t want Draven to see me as a spineless wallflower, bending to however the wind blows . She wanted to be the wind.
She wanted him to see her like a force of nature. Volcano, tornado, hurricane, earthquake…
She wanted to feel like a natural disaster to his past and a brand new start to his future.
But he doesn’t know me like I thought he did .
* * *
Draven drove her home in silence. Silence that was too goddamn loud.
His fingers tightened around the wheel; his knuckles turned white from the grip.
He blew out a breath of frustration as he drove back to the apartment. She had worn black lace and red lipstick, and Draven was fairly certain she aimed to seduce him before his dumbness struck. Her black dress shifted up her thighs as she crossed her legs and stared out the passenger window.
“I didn’t mean it like that, Thea,” he said aloud, knowing she couldn’t hear and didn’t care to hear him. Thea’s disappointment emanated from her smooth skin like an airborne poison, killing him. Taking years off his life.
It was for the best that she didn’t like him. After all, she was off-limits. In the eyes of her and his friends, he was not “ good enough ” for her. He was a stamp on her passport, a single stop in the big adventure of her life. Regrettable or forgettable.
Even as Draven thought that, he pulled his car to the side of the road. Thea gasped and glanced at him as he parked the vehicle.
The second the car stopped moving, Draven unbuckled his seatbelt and turned to Thea. She gaped at him and glanced around the dark, empty street as he leaned into her space.
His fingers pinched her chin, directing her gaze onto him. Meeting her eyes, he cupped her cheeks and moved forward until the scent of grapefruit tickled his nose. She inhaled sharply as he eliminated the distance between them.
Her eyelids fell to half-mast.
Her lips separated, pursing for him.
Baby, I’ll only kiss you when you like me again.
With nothing but an inch or two separating their faces, Draven said, “I didn’t mean that you were someone who would go back to a cheater. I didn’t mean anything about you.”
He admitted, “I said that because of my own fear. I am terrified of you going back to him. Back to a life that doesn’t excite you and to a man who doesn’t deserve you. Back to a life where we’re strangers, and you hate me and think I’m nothing but a manwhore.”
He continued, “I was talking out of my ass. I think you are strong, amazing, and resilient. And you scare me with your love of horror movies. And I think if I go back to living in an empty apartment or with anyone else, I might go insane. I want you there. I don’t want you meeting up with him because I’m jealous and stupid. I was being stupid. I won’t hide all your shoes, I promise. Just stop looking at me like I ruined everything. Can you do that, baby? Please?”
She blinked, her expression slack, while her eyes sparkled in the dim light of the car’s blue dashboard. Her tongue emerged to lick her lips as she stared back at him.
Reluctantly, he let go of her face and sat back in his seat.
Just before transitioning the car back into drive and pulling onto the road, Draven reached into his pocket to grab his phone.
He texted her, “ I’m sorry .”
For the rest of the drive, instead of peering out her passenger window, positioned as far away from him as possible in the tight car, she looked straight onto the road ahead of them.