Chapter Twenty I Know What I Like #3
I adjust my position, trying to get more comfortable, as if we totally sat like this all the time. But then Griffin clears his throat. He straightens his posture. He grips his fingers tighter into mine, as if willing me to sit still. And I realize much too late why he’s doing all this.
Muscular thigh one and thigh two are accounted for, but then there’s a third baseball-bat-shaped thing and…
Oh God.
That is his…
Oh. My. God.
Why did I sit on him? Why couldn’t I have just stood back up? Why did I have to keep playing pretend?
Poe starts talking to Beau, who looks like he wants to be anywhere else. I can’t hear their conversation, and I don’t care. I’m frozen solid. Mortified.
“I’m sorry,” Griffin murmurs into my ear, heating my skin and sending shivers racing down my spine.
“It’s fine,” I say back stiffly. “Really.”
Griffin’s thumb anxiously drums against my palms. I clutch it, dragging both our hands tighter into my lap.
“You’re fine,” I repeat, squeezing his fingers, gripping tighter, holding until he finally squeezes back. “Think of something else.”
“Trying.”
“Ooh, how about Bernie Bird? Want me to do his voice?”
“Not right now, thanks.”
He seems strained, exhaling warm breath against my neck. Goose bumps erupt all over my arms and chest. He shifts in place, but his length feels like it’s staying the same, continuing to prod against my backside as I feel his jaw clench tighter.
I wonder if he’s embarrassed that it’s me on his lap causing this to happen. I’m the woman he brought as a date only to stick it to my ex, and now Griffin is caught looking like he’s into me when it’s just normal reactions he can’t control.
“This is fine,” I repeat. “I’m in a pretty dress with makeup, and I’m moving in your lap, and…it makes sense. I’m not taking it personally.”
Griffin grips my hands tighter. His beard scratches over my bare shoulders.
Beau stares at me curiously, and Poe is laughing, and the music is too loud, and the butterflies in my stomach are raging and fighting and gnawing and—
“I don’t feel good,” I murmur.
Griffin disentangles our hands and grips my hips, starting to stand.
“Let’s get you to a bathroom,” Griffin says.
“She’s fine,” Beau says, reaching past Poe to grab my hand.
My stomach churns. “I don’t feel good,” I repeat.
Beau’s thumb strokes over my palm. Griffin’s fingers clutch the fabric of my dress, and his nostrils flare.
“I’m going to need you to remove that hand, or I will do it for you.”
“So angry,” Beau says with a smirk.
“Leave Griffin alone,” I snap, but the words strain to come out. I reach behind me to tap Griffin’s hip. “Griffin, I think I’m gonna be sick.”
Tucking his palms under my knees, Griffin swings me into his arms. Easy. Effortless. He pushes past crowds of people toward that same hallway he took Poe to, shouting, “Move!” to nobody in particular.
He takes me to the men’s restroom, shouldering past the door and then depositing me onto the tile. Then he holds back my hair as I hurl into a toilet. I press my hand to my chest, securing Griffin’s necklace out of the way. After all, I promised him I’d keep it safe.
When we creak open the door to Griffin’s mansion, it’s who knows what time o’clock, I’m drained from puking out everything I’ve ever eaten, and I’m embarrassed from doing it again outside the limo in his perfectly manicured yard.
“I’m so sorry,” I whine.
“I hated that patch of grass anyway,” he says, gently coaxing me into the house.
Ava is already in bed. Maybe it was Nancy the nanny who took care of her.
“What?” Griffin asks.
“What?”
“You mumbled something about a nanny.”
“Never mind.”
Griffin escorts me down the long hall—Was it always this long?
—and to the guest room. We stumble into the en suite bathroom.
The light is too bright when he clicks it on, so amid my involuntary whines, he clicks it back off.
He sits me near the toilet, pushes back my hair, and tucks it behind my ears.
“Greta told me not to mess my hair up,” I protest.
“I think this can be an exception.”
He pets the back of my head, strokes his thumb over my temple, and wipes under my mascara-streaked eyes. I’m sure I look like a total delight. Definitely someone to get a boner for, without a doubt.
I groan out loud.
“I need to go wake up Nancy,” he says. “But I’ll be right back, okay?”
“Nancy nanny?”
He chuckles. “She’s Dom’s teenage daughter. She babysits Ava sometimes. I’ll be back.”
“Mmkay” is all I can gurgle out. He stands, gives one lingering look, then walks out of the room.
I lean my cheek on the toilet rim, blinking through memories of tonight, sniffing back a runny nose.
Most things are a blur after I hunched over the bar / club / dance whatever’s toilet.
We left Poe with the boys. Royce agreed to get him home, and Dom was already fishing out headache-relief meds for both me and Poe.
Beau disappeared without even a goodbye.
I hear low murmurs from the hallway, and then a front door shuts.
Griffin reappears in the bedroom doorway.
He clicks on a distant lamp and walks back to the darkened bathroom.
He leans against the doorway with one hand above his head on the doorjamb and the other in his pocket.
His suit jacket is missing, but his chest hair still peeks out from under the linen shirt.
The lamplight behind him gives him an ethereal glow. A god.
My heart is pounding, and hopefully it’s not over an urge to empty my stomach again. My head swims, and word vomit, rather than actual vomit, spouts out instead.
“You’re very good-looking, do you know that?”
I’m so messy. My words slur.
“Thank you,” he answers.
I sigh. “You’re way too popular for me, Griffin Harvey.”
He snorts. “No, you’re way too cool for me, Beverly Lark.”
I shake my head. “No, I’m not the one with two—no, three—first names.”
“I thought that made me untrustworthy.”
“You’re the most trustworthy. I’m drunk, and you’re being so…so…dadly.”
“Dadly?”
“You’re watching over me. You don’t have to. You’re going”—I have to find the words—“above and beyond.”
“If taking care of you is above and beyond, then that’s a very low bar.”
“Beau liked when I got drunk but not this drunk.”
Griffin tightens his jaw, grinding the molars back and forth before saying, “Beau is not a good person.”
“You’re a good person,” I counter.
“That’s not…” He closes his eyes, then opens them, as if processing. “I wasn’t asking for that compliment.”
“I know.” Because he is a good person. Griffin is the best type of person. “But you are,” I insist. “A good person. A good man.”
He sighs. “I’m not arguing with someone who’s drunk.”
“Because I’d win.”