Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
JOSH
Josh fidgeted with his inbox open while waiting for the telltale buzz of his phone that didn’t come.
Cass hadn’t replied after her last text. Maybe her phone died again. Maybe some shithead had already sized up the vulnerable woman, alone, who couldn’t fend off his advances.
It didn’t matter if she wanted to be alone tonight. The last thing he’d planned on doing at ten p.m. on a Tuesday night was head downtown for a rescue. But if she was as blitzed as her texts made it sound, he wasn’t chancing her getting home alone in that state.
If he could find her.
He swore under his breath, scrolling down the text thread with Libby that was littered with details on generators and wattage and gel filters.
Do you know where Cass is tonight?
Yeah, why?
Because she got stood up
Dammit
Architect Leo
Piece of shit
He wasn’t sure if Libby was calling the architect a piece of shit for standing Cass up, or him for matching them for the date. Both were probably true.
I’ll make sure she gets home safe if you can let me know where she is
I’ll come with
I’ve got her
A pin to a nearby address landed in his messages, followed by a demand to keep her posted a second later. Josh shrugged into his jacket and braced himself for the cold.
Fucking fuck. He should have unmatched the architect, too.
The cocktail bar looked like it had been edgy thirty years ago. It glittered with dated chrome fixtures, faux wood panelling, and the brittle chatter of middle-aged divorcees desperate for a hookup. Canned hotel jazz wafted out of hidden speakers, the entire ambiance aggressively trying to convince patrons it was cool and that there was no need to leave in search of a trendier location. By the scant number occupying tables, patrons had either gaslit themselves into buying the vibe of the bar, or already gone home, either with a conquest or solo.
Josh’s eyes scraped over to where Cass teetered on a bar stool, its scooped back the only thing preventing her from toppling over. A middle-aged man in a well-cut suit sat on the stool beside her, his hand resting on the back of her chair and shoving a drink toward her.
Asshole . Trying to take advantage of a drunk woman. Called it. Josh cut into the narrow space between Cass’s stool and the guy leaning into her .
“She doesn’t want to talk to you,” Josh said, yanking the dude’s chair back so that he stumbled onto his loafers.
“Whoa, friend.” The shorter man tugged the lapels of his jacket straight. “Are you Josh?”
“I’m her boyfriend, shitknob.” He stepped in, putting his body between them. Just to drive the point home, he reached his arm around Cass’s sloping shoulders. “Now, fuck off.”
Cass looked up for the first time with bleary eyes. “Oh, Josh!” Even through her slurring, her wine-stained mouth stretched into a soft smile, and the way she said his name, with comfort and trust, sent a rush through his stomach.
A sliver of his worry eased. If she was still smiling, she might not be so drunk that she would turn into a weepy mess. He hoped.
Cass leaned into him, and he refocused his attention on staring down the suit and away from the curve of her breast grazing his torso.
“Thought I was going to be alone tonight,” she hummed against his arm.
“Not if you don’t want to be.” Josh slid onto the bar stool beside her, rubbing a hand down her back and continuing to glare at the unwelcome interloper. “Sorry I’m late, beautiful.”
“This is my friend Omar. He said he’d …” Cass blinked at him. “Where’d your date go?”
“He left,” Omar replied. “You’re better company, anyway.”
Well, shit. This Omar guy comforted her while she cried into her mojito, and his date ditched him for doing a good deed.
Apparently wankers bailing on people was the theme of the night.
Josh gritted his teeth. “I’m sorry I told you to fuck off.”
“Don’t mention it,” he said, getting up to leave. “Can you get her home? And try to get her to drink a glass of water.”
Cass gave Omar a series of sloppy hugs with demands to hang out soon, before he could finally break free. She turned back to Josh , elbow propped on the sticky bar. “What are you doing here?”
“Rescuing a damsel in distress.”
Cass giggled. “Does that make you my knight-in-shining armour?”
Far from it . “Do you remember texting me?”
“I did?” Cass peered down at her phone and swayed dangerously in her seat, the smile fading from her lips. “It’s dead, anyway. At least I can’t read his texts anymore.”
Texts from whom? And why did that make her sound relieved and dejected at the same time? Josh turned his anger to the bartender, who was likely responsible for over serving her. “How many has she had?”
The skinny man scrubbed a palm over the nape of his neck and had the decency to look guilty. “A couple too many.”
Obviously. Josh propped his arms under Cass’s. “Come on, let’s get you out of here.”
“I haven’t finished my wine!” she protested.
Her morning would be bad enough without adding more alcohol to the mix. Josh reached over the bar and dumped the last of the wine into the sink. “All done. I’m bringing you home.”
A light dust of snow had accumulated on his rental car. Josh maneuvered Cass into the passenger’s seat and wiped the windshield with his arm, swearing as flakes snuck down the collar of his jacket. He dropped into the driver’s seat and texted Stephen.
Yo what time are call sheets tomorrow?
Libs wants to know if you got Cass yet
With her now
She’s in for a rough morning but she’s fine
We roll at 11. Might want to get here for 9 in case Brynne wants to meet before Friday’s scenes.
Shit. That’s right. Brynne had mentioned she had ideas about the scenes they were filming in a few days. Nine a.m. wouldn’t be a problem for him. He wasn’t the one whose head would feel like a bag of rusty hammers in a glass factory tomorrow.
When’s Cass on set?
Noon
Josh chewed the inside of his cheek and shifted his gaze down to the borderline comatose woman beside him. Noon would come a lot earlier than she wanted.
Even like this, she looked adorably dishevelled. Her curls had frizzed with the melting snow, and her lipstick must have worn off on the rims of who knew how many glasses. At least her lipstick hadn’t worn off on Leo. Josh swallowed the guilt that he was still hung up on her kissing other people when she was swaying in his passenger seat.
He reached over Cass’s pliant form to buckle her in and enveloped her freezing hands in his. “Why didn’t you call me? I would have come for you,” he whispered.
“Didn’t want to bother you.” She leaned into him, face smushed against his collar. “You smell so good,” she said in a breathy voice.
He snorted to cover the lurch under his ribs. “Okay, Lucky Charms. You are going to have a rough morning.”
“It’s already rough.”
“What happened tonight?” he murmured into her hair.
Her breathing fell into a quiet pattern. Melancholy misted around her in a miasma, dulling her shine and putting her in shadow.“I wasn’t stood up. The guy showed. Stuck around for a few minutes, ordered a drink, and said he had a call he had to make. Then he didn’t come back. He sent me a DM and said I seemed nice, but he usually was into women who were different physically. He said it looked like I had cankles.”
Josh stopped himself from rearing back. What the actual fuck? Cass was a voluptuous woman, and her profile picture had put every curve joyously on display. How that asshole thought he was meeting someone different made no sense.
He shut down the image of himself putting his lips to those ankles, slung over his shoulders as he’d buried himself in her. “That asshat doesn’t know what he missed out on.”
Tonight was his fault. Every single night she’d spent with a dickhead had been his fault. Sending out his sensitive Cass to be chewed up and spit out in the name of fuckboy exposure therapy. He ran a hand down her sleeve, wishing he could brush away the hurt, and tucked her head under his chin.
Cass sighed. “Why did he have to say that? He could have just used his inside voice and I would never be the wiser.”
Josh clenched his jaw. Fuck that guy. If he’d have been there with her, he’d have rearranged that asshole’s teeth.
If he’d have been there with her, she wouldn’t be meeting up with the asshole and getting her self-esteem dunked on in the first place. Fuck. He thumbed the car’s start button. “Time to get you home.”
“Why am I never enough for them?”
The words floated to him, and his heart clenched in his chest. He thought back to what he’d so callously said months ago. Ever think you just make them want more? He’d almost been right.
“Maybe you make them realize they want more, because you show them what more could look like.”
He stroked her arm, her head resting on his shoulder. Everything about her was so feminine. The fleshiness of her body, how it fit so perfectly against his that night they spent together. Even here in the car, her every curve soft against his angles as she sprawled ove r the console. Her melodic voice, so gentle and kind, even when he was being an asshole to everyone around them. The way she smelled, sweet and flowery and utterly intoxicating.
He breathed deeply and closed his eyes. “You make them realize they want to be better men. They’re just not smart enough to figure that out until you’re gone.”
“That’s a nice thought,” she murmured after a moment, and sniffed.
The more he got to know her, the more he thought he might have found the answer. People realized who they were, what they wanted, but only after the ship had sailed. Leaving Cass waiting on the docks, watching someone embark on a new adventure that she prepared them for.
“You know the worst part? I could have had a good time tonight if I hadn’t tried to meet this guy,” Cass slurred against his shoulder. “I set this date up at the last minute to make an excuse to not go out with Nick.”
Josh jerked on the brakes a little too hard as his insides curdled. “Nick texted again?”
“Right on time. Just when I start to feel like he might have forgotten about me, he texts me this afternoon.” Cass tipped against him. “‘Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!’” she quoted with a mirthless giggle. “I asked Libby to hide my phone, but she wouldn’t. I panicked and messaged three Tinder guys. Should have just gone with the devil I knew instead of the devil I didn’t.”
So, this fuckknob, that he had swiped for her, was the one who had made her feel like this. Josh didn’t know if he or the other dude was the bigger asshole.
No, he did know. Leo, who was blinder than he was stupid. But I’m right behind in second place.
“You’re not about to cry on me, are you?” he asked, tense.
“Nope. You don’t make me cry. You don’t make me suffer, remember? ”
Don’t I, though?
“I wish I could have just gone out with you. I like you, and I think you like me, but you have other more important things going on and well, here we are,” she rambled, hand waving in circles and nearly turning on the windshield wipers.
The words cut. She was right. On both counts. He did like her. A lot more than he was comfortable admitting. This sending her out with a parade of assholes to forget another asshole … it seemed reasonable at the time. Now it just flamed a possessive streak he didn’t know he had.
But she was also right that he couldn’t be with her. He didn’t commit to one person for a lot of reasons, and his attention needing to be focused on this film was only one of them. For the first time he could remember in years, he wanted to rearrange those priorities, but he was miles away from being able to do that.
Instead, he snatched her hand out of the air and tucked it back into his. “But you didn’t call Nick. That’s progress.”
“If I would have called Nick, tomorrow still would have sucked, but at least tonight would have been fun. Someone would have told me I was beautiful.” Cass turned an imploring look at him with unfocussed eyes. “Can you please tell me I’m beautiful? I really need that right now.”
Cass was beyond beautiful. She was charming, sweet, and did impossible things to his brain. She lit up the room whenever she entered and brought the best out in everyone around her. Even him. She was soft and gorgeous and had a laugh that cleansed his soul. She was brilliant and beautiful and …
“You are a vision,” he whispered into her hair, pulling her out of his car and onto the snowy sidewalk. “Come on. We’re home.”
Cass dropped her keys twice up the steps to her apartment and leaned on him all the way up the short elevator ride, then forgotten her keys were already in her hand by the time they were down the hall. Josh unlocked the door, left her keys on the only bare sp ot on the kitchen counter, and maneuvered her into a chair half-buried under clothes. Even this sauced, she moved with a fluid grace that made her descent into the chair look choreographed to a silent song instead of a drunken stumble.
He zipped her out of her jacket, then knelt at her feet, tugging off her boots one at a time. He circled his thumb over the curve of her ankle. “You are going to be in a world of hurt tomorrow.”
Cass giggled, head lolling to the side. “Maybe you can kiss it better.”
Oh, shit. Worse than weepy drunk was horny drunk.
In this light, this close, her hazel eyes looked like the golden hour, flecked with green jewels across a stormy sea. Cass transfixed him with her stare, reaching out with light fingertips to caress the angle of his jaw. “I liked kissing you. Did you like kissing me?”
Josh’s insides melted. Yeah, he did. Her lips had felt so good on his that night. The feel of her body yielding under the pressure of his mouth, how she’d responded to his every claim, wherever he deigned to taste.
Don’t think about how you wished you’d gone down on her that night to taste her everywhere, asshole.
He eased her away from him as gently as he could. He gathered her hands from around his neck and cradled them in his own, holding them against his chest. She’d suffered enough rejection tonight, but he tilted his head up, away from her perfect mouth, and planted his lips chastely on her forehead. “I could write sonnets about kissing you,” he said, stroking her cheek, “but you are in no shape for that right now.”
With any luck, horny drunk would be replaced with sleepy drunk.
“Sonnets are pretty,” she agreed. She retrieved a hand to poke a finger into his chest with faux ferocity. “Okay, Sexy Dimples, you need to write me a sonnet.”
There was a first time for everything. Josh swallowed his laugh. He’ d take giggly drunk. “I hope for your sake that you don’t remember any of this tomorrow.” Then he’d be off the hook for writing sonnets, too.
Cass blinked down at her bare feet. “Where’d my boots go?”