5. My Knees Have Left the Chat #2
“Where did you learn to dance?” I asked, surprised by his hidden, or maybe not so hidden, talent.
His grin was devilish as he responded with a vague and suggestive, “I’ve had a lot of practice making women smile.”
I couldn’t help it, I laughed out loud, for real, the first time all day. The relief flooded out of me, fizzy and sweet. I let Damon twirl me again, past a group of tipsy guests line dancing in a circle, past a table of older partygoers who watched with benevolent inebriation.
That’s when I saw Dawson.
He was still dancing with the woman in the orange dress.
She was beautiful, the kind of beautiful that didn’t try—black hair pulled back in an effortless ponytail, high cheekbones, a form-fitting off-the-shoulder dress that molded to her hourglass figure and left her olive-skinned shoulders bare.
She was saying something to him, something that made him smile, just a little, just enough to reveal the dimple in his right cheek.
For a second, I thought I might puke right there on the temporary parquet.
Damon must have noticed the change in my rhythm because he slowed, following my gaze.
“She’s gorgeous,” I admitted. The words came out strangled. Was that his girlfriend? Just because he wasn’t getting married today didn’t mean he wasn’t in a serious relationship.
“Mmm,” Damon made a non-committal sound as he shrugged. “She’s not you.”
It was a sweet compliment, and I took it as such. I appreciated him trying to make me feel better that his brother was with a woman who could easily be a Victoria’s Secret or Sports Illustrated model.
He spun me again, faster this time, and I was happier for it because it was in the opposite direction of Dawson.
The song faded on a high, sweet note, and I stepped out of Damon’s arms and thanked him for the dance, I even meant it. He gave a mini-bow and relinquished me to the crowd with a generous, “Anytime, beautiful. My dance card is always blank for you.”
I stepped off the parquet floor and rushed out of the barn, desperate for a breath of air that wasn’t saturated in body heat and nostalgia. I didn’t make it ten feet before I was stopped in my tracks. A man stood in my path. Not just any man. Dawson.
He was close. Maybe a foot away. The breadth of his shoulders and the way he stilled the air around him enveloped me.
I could have reached out and touched the fabric of his shirt, or the tender skin at his throat, or the square cut of his jaw where a day’s worth of stubble caught the glint of lantern light.
For a wild second I was seventeen again, he was mine, and I was his, and no time had passed at all.
My heart was hammering so hard that I worried it might shake something loose in my chest.
All my senses lit up at once and assaulted me from every angle.
His scent wrapped around me, warm, masculine, and dangerously addictive.
The intoxicatingly sensual aroma was clean, earthy, and distinctly male, drawing me closer to him.
Up close, the lines at the corners of his eyes framed them in a way that only made them look older, wiser, and somehow sexier.
The flecks of gold swimming in his whiskey irises caught me off guard.
I’d forgotten how they’d shift from hazel to honey as the light changed.
I absorbed the information in less than a second, and still my brain managed to catalog the tiniest of details, the freckle on his left cheekbone, just above the faintest scar, the same spot I used to press my lips to when I needed to remember he was real.
“Hey,” he said.
Just that. Hey.
The word hit me like a sucker punch. His voice—lower than I remembered, rougher at the edges—rolled over me in a wave.
I was so lost in him I barely registered how lightheaded and woozy I felt.
If he’d touched me, even accidentally, I’m not sure I’d have made it.
My knees were already telegraphing distress signals and my heart was performing escape artistry against my ribs.
The only thing that kept me vertical was the determination not to let him see how much this reunion was affecting me. I had too much pride for that.
He stood staring at me, hands at his sides.
He did not reach out for a hug or handshake.
That was mercy, or maybe it was strategy.
I watched the muscles in his jaw work as he searched for something to say, but it was clearly an effort.
I wondered if he felt it too, the gravity, the magnetic draw to one another.
“You look…” he inhaled a shaky breath as his eyes scanned my face as if he couldn’t quite believe I was there, in the flesh, standing in front of him. “Good,” he finally finished. “You look really good.”
“Thanks.” I grinned, swallowing hard as butterflies threw a rave in my stomach. “You too.”
His gaze flicked up, lingered for a second, then dropped away. All the familiar rhythms between us—joke, tease, deflect—had evaporated. Only the raw, unsaid things remained.
He cleared his throat. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, um…” I was caught off guard by his question, causing me to stumble over my words. “Um, your, um, mom invited me. I ran into her downtown, and she sort of insisted I come back and—”
“I mean in town,” he clarified.
The words echoed Damon’s question earlier, but this felt like more stakes were involved.
Dawson’s stare was a searchlight, cutting through all pretenses.
I found myself staring at his hands, remembering how they’d always found mine in the dark, how they’d steadied me when nothing else could.
Now they were fists at his sides, knuckles blanched white.
“It’s Buddy,” I replied, once I trusted my voice not to crack. “He had a heart attack. And a stroke. I was in L.A. at a conference, and I got on the first flight.”
I wasn’t sure why I was telling him my entire life story. It’s not like he’d asked for it.
There was a pause, the kind that swelled until everything else in the room went quiet. Dawson’s tough-guy facade crumpled at the edges, his eyes filling with concern. He’d always had a very special relationship with my grandfather, perhaps even a stronger bond than I had with Buddy.
“Is he okay? I mean, is he going to be okay?” he asked, concern dripping from every word.
“I think so…I hope so. He’s in the ICU now. I saw him as soon as I got into town. I left so he could rest. I just spoke to the hospital, and they said he’s sleeping comfortably.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and the words sounded like he meant them. Like he’d been waiting a decade to say it.
I nodded, feeling suddenly exposed and unsure of what to do with my hands. “Thanks.”
The silence that followed was somehow worse than any argument we’d ever had. He looked at me, really looked, like he was taking inventory of all the years that had passed and trying to figure out where they’d gone. I couldn’t stand it.