Chapter 20 #2
“Tanner Auclair?” The girl’s voice is sticky sweet and drunk.
Tanner looks over, still in my perfumed haze. He doesn’t say anything at first, he just blinks, like he’s shocked that other people exist here.
“It’s Vesta Miller?” She tilts her head like that means something, and he stares blankly before something clicks in his expression.
“Oh, Vesta, right, listen I—” His eyes flick to mine then back to the short blonde with big blue eyes and minimal clothing.
“It’s so good to see you,” she coos, batting her eyelashes and ignoring my arm around his neck and his hands clinging to my waist. “When are we going to go out again?”
I feel my jaw drop and eyebrows jump. My first instinct is to grill him.
My second is to lay her out. Jealousy is crawling to the front seat and ready to question who the fuck this girl is and why she thinks she can look at him like that.
I want to dig my claws into Tanner’s shoulders.
He’s mine, and standing here in yet another shitty run-down bar, I know it’s true.
I know he’s mine. He has proved that over and over again.
But am I his? Can I really stake a claim on him if I haven’t given him what he has so freely given me? Though I stand here clutching him like a possessive animal, I don’t think I have the right to. I have no right to his heart, especially when I can’t fully give him mine.
I drop my hands from Tanner’s arm and choke out a lie. “Glad to see you took my advice.”
He cocks his head to the side and narrows his gaze. “What advice?” His voice is bewildered as I turn and slip back through the crowd, biting my lip and blinking my stupid burning eyes. “Hannah, wait—”
I spot Lauren near the bar talking into Rhett’s ear, so I dodge away toward the bathrooms, not wanting to address a single thing that just happened.
Especially the unwarranted jealousy boiling up in my chest. I burst through the bathroom door and look at myself in the mirror.
I swipe away the stray tear and wonder how I’ve been so dumb.
Of course I had feelings. And pretending that I didn’t obviously hasn’t helped.
This has all been reckless. Dancing with him, letting his lips find their place on my neck, letting my body melt into his every time we stand just a little too close to each other.
Yet, I have no right to be upset. I have pushed him away again and again and yet here I am, dabbing under my eyes with cheap brown paper towel when the door swings open.
“Hannah.”
My eyes find Tanner’s in the mirror as he stands behind me.
“This is the ladies’ room.”
He shakes his head like that is the least important fact at this moment. “What. Advice.”
I laugh and wipe another tear; hot embarrassment now replaces the attraction that was just in my bones. “I told you to take other girls out.”
There’s a crack in his expression. One I feel guilty somehow for causing.
“Hannah, I’m not taking Vesta Miller anywhere,” he almost growls. “I went out with her once last summer. I didn’t call her back.”
It was her. She was the date Lauren told me about.
“It doesn’t matter,” I lie. “We’re friends.”
“Ask me why I didn’t call her back.” He drops his voice as he steps closer. He’s only a foot behind me now and my entire body is flooded with, I don’t know. Frustration? Anger? Desire?
“Tanner—”
“Because she wasn’t you.” Closer. “She was interested, and I couldn’t have you, so I gave in and took her out. But she wasn’t you.”
“It doesn’t matter—”
“Don’t do that.” His voice is almost pained as he speaks.
The speakers overhead rumble with the opening notes to a song we know. One we sang to in a hole-in-the-wall bar in Chicago.
“It does matter.” He forces me to turn to face him and meet his leveled gaze. His hands cup my head, as his fingers tangle in my hair. “Stop saying it doesn’t matter, because we both know better than that.”
Before I can respond, the door opens but he doesn’t take his eyes off me.
“Sorry,” the girls who’s walked in begins to say, but then her face twists in confusion. “Tanner?”
That unmerited jealousy comes to a rolling boil.
“I—” He glances at her for a second.
“Sorry.” She shakes her head. “I'm Reagan, Riley’s sister?”
Tanner's shoulder slump. “Reagan, I'm sorry, I didn’t recognize you.”
“Don’t be. It’s been a long time.” Her eyes shift expectedly over to me.
“Hannah, this is Reagan. Reagan this is my, uh, Hannah.”
Reagan and I both whip our heads to look at Tanner and the man is blushing.
“Nice to meet you, my Hannah, but I would like to pee, so Tanner if you could…” She motions toward the door and Tanner nods.
“Right. Of course.” He glances at me. “This isn’t over.” He strides out of the bathroom with his jaw clenched.
“I heard about you,” Reagan says when the door shuts behind him.
I open my mouth to tell her I’m not actually his, but I can’t bring myself to deny it. Denying it doesn’t feel entirely honest.
“What do you mean?” I question.
“Riley and Tanner were engaged. It was a mess.” She shrugs, almost as if she feels guilty about it. “She’s really glad to see him so happy now.”
What the fuck? I blink at her, waiting for a better explanation and she gives me none.
“Riley?” I ask, my stomach sitting somewhere in my knees now. “Like Riley at the YMCA?”
She nods. “Yeah, she said her Poppy and your Winnie are good friends. Sorry, I just—” she motions toward the bathroom stall, then slips in. “It’s funny though. I don’t think he ever really looked at Riley the way he was just looking at you.”
My mind trips over a new truth. One he failed to ever mention.
I dip out of the bathroom while Reagan is mid-sentence in her stall, and I almost run into the man himself leaning up against the opposite wall, arms over his chest, waiting. My stomach churns and I’m not sure if it’s the bass from the music, or the echo from my heart beating in my chest.
“You let Winnie name your sheep after your ex-fiancée’s daughter?” I say it and I don’t know if it’s an accusation, a statement, or a question.
“Winnie could have named it shit-head, and I would have let her do it.”
“I'm friends with Riley, and you have never said anything.”
“Hannah, you can be friends with anyone you like. Who am I to tell you who you can’t be friends with?”
I bite in the inside of my cheek. “How did you really get Winnie a spot at the Y?”
He sighs. “I called Riley and asked her to make a spot for her.”
“And that’s it? Your ex-fiancée just happily obliged?”
“She put me through Hell. It was the least she could do.”
“Hell? Tanner, what are you talking about?”
He blows out a gust of air. “When she got pregnant, she let me believe the baby was mine until she was six months along. Turns out she had been cheating on me with a coworker at the shop. It was his baby and she knew all along. I’m the one who picked out the name Poppy.”