Chapter 20 Donovan
DONOVAN
Walking into the bar, I was drawn to Audra immediately, like always.
She looked good in just about everything she wore, from her scrubs to that little white sundress and now these jeans.
I could have bitten my fucking fist when I saw her stand up.
They were so damn tight they’d be hard to peel off, but goddamn, what I would give to try.
Fuck. Every red-blooded man in the bar would be zeroed in on her ass when she was throwing darts later.
Did she always play darts in skin-tight jeans?
She was definitely flaunting her assets, and she looked good. Did she do it for me? I wondered.
Bringing over a round, I settled in next to the bombshell that, until these last couple of weeks, I never allowed myself the chance to realize how much I wanted to get to know.
My intention in coming here was not to corner her and monopolize her attention, but we fell into our own world again pretty quickly, just like we’d done the last couple of times we were together. It was so easy.
“So, Audra, are you one of those people who travel with their own personal dart set?” There was a dive bar in Phoenix, one of my temporary landing spots, that had a dart league.
Funnily enough, I was hooking up with a woman on that team, too.
Maybe I had a type—bar dart player. I distinctly remember the people with their own dart cases because it struck me as so ridiculous.
My parents would have a freaking stroke if I cared enough about them enough to even joke that my type was an amateur bar dart player.
Maybe I should tell them just to watch the explosion.
She giggled, and the skin around her eyes crinkled up along with her little button nose.
I couldn’t look away. “Actually, I am.” She swiped a case from the table that I hadn’t noticed.
Probably because I was staring at her the whole damn time.
“Just got these bad boys last week,” she said, showing them to me with a mix of silliness and pride.
It was like she was showing off a prize on a game show, outlining the case with her hand.
One side of my lips turned up in a smirk.
“I’m not sure if you can call them bad boys when they’re purple and pink with butterflies.
I think you need skulls and fire for that.
” She tilted her head and laughed brightly into the air.
The sound reverberated in my brain. I’d never get sick of that sound.
“Oh my God, Donovan, those dimples!” She gushed as if I didn’t know and reached up to stroke her thumb over one of them.
She must have had more to drink than I thought because she knew damn well I had them.
All I’ve done around her is grin like a madman recently.
Normally, I don’t let people touch me, and certainly not my face.
Fuck, normally, I don’t lose my mind when someone laughs either, but something about Audra made me crazy, especially after having her in my lap last night.
I’d like her to touch me again and again and again.
“I do. They don’t come out very often, but they are there.”
“That’s a lie. I see them all the time.”—She hesitated for a moment—”Well, now I do,” she clarified as her gaze bounced between my eyes, my dimples, and my lips. Her hand was still on my cheek. Did she want me to kiss her?
I was often told that I was good-looking. Before I drained the trust, I was named the most handsome bachelor in some ridiculous magazine in New York, and they compared me to a ‘long-lost Hemsworth brother with brown eyes.’ My mother hung that article up. Not any of my actual notable achievements.
“Only with you,” I flirted back, giving her an exaggerated smile that didn’t actually feel too exaggerated at that moment, pointing out both dimples with my fingers.
We were in the middle of talking about other bar games and making silly bets on who would be better, when a micro expression of panic crossed her face before a cordial mask snapped into place.
What happened to my crinkle-eyed flirt just now?
I turned around to follow her gaze. Two additional guys had walked up to the group and were introduced as Eli and Theo.
I wasn’t sure how they fit into this equation.
Eli seemed to be pretty into Audra—who appeared to be clueless—but my hackles rose when Theo spoke.
He was glaring at me. I glared right back because who the fuck was this guy?
Something about him gave me pause. Everyone at the table seemed to ice him out of conversation, too. What was that about?
Audra and Eli, who I found out was her partner, got summoned to play, so the rest of us watched and cheered them on.
They ended up winning the match, although it was also a victory for me when she started dancing around in those fucking jeans, that’s for sure.
Audra was good, and even though I did a fair bit of shit-talking during our bar game conversation, she’d kick my ass.
She and Eli went off to submit their scores, and then she strutted back to the table with popcorn for all of us.
Everyone reached in like vultures. Thankfully, her dart partner and his buddy didn’t come back, but I noticed how much the two of them kept glancing in our direction.
The music was loud, and the place was just abuzz with Friday night fun.
The smell of cheap beer, popcorn, and sweat filled the air.
We had to talk loudly to hear each other.
In the middle of a conversation lull, Maeve shouted out to the table, “Guys, I have a surprise! Donovan is fucking nuts! Completely off his rocker.” An outburst, no doubt fueled by alcohol.
Everyone turned to look at me. Even after these last couple of weeks, we weren’t really at ‘diving into my past’ territory.
“Was,” I clarified, laughing. “I was quite a handful for about five years. Things have settled down since then.”
“Right,” chuckled Maverick, “because you’re the ripe old age of what…
twenty-eight?” Everyone laughed. Murphy chimed in with a mocking grandfather voice, “Back in my day, I was a hellion, kids.” It was such a stupid rib, but I didn’t realize how much I’d missed silly ribs like that.
The kind that friends doled out to each other.
It’d been years since I’d seen my adventuring group, and though we didn’t stand the test of time when things got rough, we had fun together all those years ago.
Audra’s glassy eyes caught mine, and they sparkled as she asked, “What kinds of things did you do, Donovan?” I unintentionally held her gaze for a little longer than necessary, mostly because it was hard to turn away from her.
“Well, lots, but one of my favorites is I roasted a marshmallow over flowing lava on Mount Kīlauea in Hawaii.”
Looks of wide eyes and surprise came from the table as a collective symphony of ‘whats’ and ‘nos’ filled the air.
“How?” Audra finally asked. “You didn’t mention that the other night.” Her head tilted in question.
“We were on Big Island in Hawaii in Volcano National Park. Armed with a pack of marshmallows and a stick, we hiked for about five hours up the old lava flows to where we heard from locals that there were some openings. We were idiots, so we didn’t even have hiking shoes on, just regular gym shoes.
God, we were so dumb. When we got close to the break in the ground, we could actually see the lava flowing.
Saying it was surreal is an understatement.
The rubber on the bottom of our shoes would melt if we stood still, so we had to keep alternating between having one foot in the air and one on the ground.
And then we got out our stuff and roasted those babies up. ”
“That’s insane, Donovan. Were they the most delicious marshmallows you’ve ever had?” Juliette asked from across the table.
“No, they were unequivocally the worst,” I laughed at the memory. “They tasted like rotten eggs because of the sulfur from the volcano, but it was certainly the proudest I’ve ever been of a marshmallow.”
“Let’s go to Hawaii and roast marshmallows over lava, Tucker! Let’s make that our trip!” Maeve said dreamily. I caught Tucker’s knowing eyes, and he played it off like a professional.
“Put it on the list, Maeve,” he laughed.
The night flew by, and the bar was clearing out ahead of closing time, so it was about half full when some shouts got our attention.
It was a group of people who all had to be just twenty-one.
But as we turned, we saw one of them hit the floor.
While a person in their group was reaching to catch him, his arm hit beer bottles, and a couple of them crashed and broke, so there was glass in this mix, too.
Before I could even begin to react, a flash passed in my peripheral and Audra was on her feet, heading over to assess what was happening.
A bit of déjà vu, I thought. Snapping out of it, I followed right behind her.
The guy on the ground was convulsing. Holy shit, was this a seizure?
Audra took complete control again. She knelt on the floor of the bar next to the kid, not caring that it was filthy with popcorn, stale beer, fresh liquids dripping off the table, and who knows what else.
“You, in the green polo, call 9-1-1.” She pointed and looked at the boy in the green polo, who got his phone out and started dialing.
“Donovan, please start the stopwatch on your phone,” and without question, I followed her instruction even though I had no idea why she wanted a stopwatch going. Then she looked up at the group of drunk kids who looked to have indulged in more than just cheap alcohol.