Chapter 23
Willow
Brunch
Proposition a guy (Does this count as a re-do? I definitely never did this before)
Willow: I kissed him.
Zoe: The vet? You went out with him again?
Willow: No.
Zoe: Your keeper?! Tell me everything!
Zoe: And I mean everything.
I looked toward the entrance to the diner where Deacon said to meet him for brunch, and I anxiously tapped my nails on the surface of the table, even though I was twenty minutes early and already halfway into a Bloody Mary.
Kissing Deacon in the rain had my head spinning.
The kiss itself was amazing, and I kept touching my fingers to my lips, remembering the feel of his kiss like I could hold on to the sense memory.
But when I arrived home and stood outside with Gus, I had time to think through all the ways it raised more questions I didn’t want the answers to.
He’d been really shaken by his friends’ news, and we’d both been drinking.
And it would have been so easy for it to become more than a kiss.
Willow: There was no . It was just a kiss and we were drunk.
Zoe: I bet there was significant produce still involved.
Deacon had been hard against my stomach; the memory of that rigid length against me was imprinted in my memory.
Even as my head spun over the fact that the kiss between us was a bad idea, I felt a pulse deep in my core every time I thought about the way I’d felt in his arms, our bodies aligned.
I’d started and deleted more texts to him than I could count, but the day before he’d messaged to confirm brunch and sent this location along with a .
I’d expected him to cancel—it would be beyond awkward, but I was also relieved to hear from him. Maybe the kiss meant nothing.
Willow: He’s my brother’s best friend. We can’t get together—if we did and then split, it would put Cruz between us.
Cruz—my brother, my rock, my only family.
There’s no way I could get into something with his best friend, especially not while he was off saving lives and in danger.
He’d left me a message that he’d be unreachable for a while—he’d sent those before.
He’d tell me not to worry and then I’d spend the next however long he was gone constantly worrying.
If I started something with Deacon like that kiss made me want to, and then it ended, I knew Cruz would choose me and he’d lose his best friend.
Zoe: So, don’t date…No relationship means no breakup.
Willow: What do you mean?
The dots bounced, and then a GIF showing a close-up of an animal tongue filled the screen.
Zoe: And don’t say you don’t want to…In a moment of weakness, you sent me a picture of page two of your re-do list!
I blushed, realizing she was right. We’d been up late laughing and joking, and I couldn’t even blame alcohol because I’d been sipping Diet Coke next to Gus in my bed, wishing there was a human warm body available to keep me company.
I’d started jotting down ideas while listening to a really great audiobook by my favorite romance author, and my imagination took over.
Page two was never meant for someone else’s eyes, a list of the firsts I wanted a re-do on in the bedroom after my lackluster experiences with Spencer.
I’d added sex and orgasms to my page one, but there were so many more things.
I’d planned to toss the list, but after that kiss, I kept coming back to it. Wondering.
Zoe: You can tell me I’m right later.
Willow: I can’t just…proposition him for a friends-with-benefits thing. How do you even do that?
Zoe’s audio message came through. “Hey, Captain America, let’s see how many times we can make each other come, no strings. You in?”
Willow: !!! I am in public! At brunch! One does not proposition someone over brunch.
I chuckled, picturing the country club crowd and that happening at the table near us between the Fletchers and the Bancrofts.
Zoe: French toast is an aphrodisiac. It could work.
The door pushed open and Deacon strode in, his backpack slung over his shoulder—he’d mentioned he’d be coming from the library.
He kept saying how school was just something to do until he could go back into the service, but most days, he seemed to take school as seriously as anyone I’d ever seen.
He had glasses perched on his head I hadn’t seen him wear before.
Willow: Gotta go. He’s here.
The dots bounced, but nothing came through, and I set the phone down to wave at Deacon.
“Hey,” he said, grabbing the chair across from me. “How’s it going?”
I noticed how he met my gaze, but then his eyes skirted across my face and peered over my shoulder toward the bar, then down to my Bloody Mary and the stalk of celery sticking out proudly.
I’d planned to talk about the kiss when he arrived, to address it head-on like the badass, assertive woman I was trying to be.
But with him sitting here, it was way easier to pretend it never happened.
“I didn’t know you wore glasses,” I said, motioning to where they were pushed into his hair.
“Oh,” he said, snagging them from his head. “For reading. Ignored that advice through school the first time around. Figured I’d try it out this time around.”
“Can I see them on you?”
“They’re nothing special,” he said, sliding the thin black frames onto his face and brushing his hair away from his forehead.
The sharp angles of Deacon’s face and the hints of gold in the chocolate of his eyes were only enhanced by the glasses, and my breath caught in my throat before I spoke up.
“They look good on you,” I finally said, regaining my senses.
“Who doesn’t love a man in glasses? I bet there are some fans in your study group. ”
He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck and gave me a wan smile. “Nah. I mostly keep to myself.”
“Sure—you’re there to learn, not score. Just saying you look good in the glasses. It’s a good look for you. And if you wanted to score, I bet the glasses would help.” I screamed inside my head to stop talking. My interactions with Deacon had never been awkward until now.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, pulling them from his face and digging in his bag for a case.
He reached for a menu without looking back at me, and the sinking feeling returned.
“This place is supposed to have the best biscuits and gravy in town. And I’ve warned the staff you’ll be spilling copiously.
” His gaze flicked up from over the menu, and he flashed me a real smile, a Deacon smile with a glint of mischief.
“Spilling isn’t the goal,” I insisted. “I’m not actively trying to be a slob.”
“Just unintentional slobbering?” His fingers glided down the back of the plastic menu, and a memory of those fingers sliding along my cheek in the rain flashed through my mind.
“Shut up,” I said, swatting him across the table with my menu. “And slobbering is something else.”
“Oh,” he said with a suggestive wink. “I know.”
I laughed. “You’re ridiculous,” I said, looking at the menu and then back up at him, stealing a surreptitious glance as the server approached to take his drink order. Maybe we didn’t need to talk about the kiss or anything else that was more serious. This felt normal again.
Of course, that wasn’t my luck.
On the table, my screen lit up with an incoming message from Zoe, and I tapped to mute the thread, but of course hit play on the voice memo instead.
“Ride that man until he can’t see and then remind him his sense of taste is enhanced with his lack of vision.”
My face flamed, and Deacon looked surprised, his eyebrows moving into his hairline. “How is Zoe? Interesting woman.”
I silenced my phone, fumbling with the right icon, and felt his eyes on me. “She is,” I said, not meeting his eye.
A server brought over a glass of orange juice and winked at him.
Deacon knew all the women in the metro area, and they all liked him, but he nodded kindly and thanked her before turning back to me.
I’d been too distracted by his fingers on the menu to notice her recognition of him the first time.
“Is she talking about the vet? Haven’t heard you talk about him much. ”
“Who knows? She could be talking about anyone.” I shrugged, still embarrassed, but it was beyond time to fess up. “He never asked me out again. There wasn’t really a spark, but he did help me get that volunteer gig and lent me his old GRE study prep materials.”
“Sparks matter.” He looked between me and the menu. “And he was too short for you, anyway.”
I snort-laughed at the ridiculous argument to make me feel better.
“He’s almost as tall as you,” I said, not thinking before the words came out, and I realized I’d implied he was the right height for me.
Implied he was right for me, and that was not the energy I was going for.
“Did Cruz ever tell you Zoe has a thing for him?” I tried desperately to change the subject because it felt like my face was on fire.
He chuckled and took a sip of the juice. “He did. Mentioned she’d offered to send photos.”
I cringed. “He told me he turned her down. Please don’t tell me he accepted her offer!”
“I plead the Fifth.” He raised his palms. “I doubt it, though. He’s too cautious about things like that. He’s nuts about phone privacy.”
“What about you?” I wished I could pull the words back into my mouth because they sounded so suggestive and way too flirty. Plus, I didn’t want to imagine him exchanging sexy photos with women.
“Not recently.” His easy smile had returned, and this was his normal, indiscriminate flirting I’d gotten used to. “And only if she wants to—there’s way more at stake for women sending pictures, I think. Why do you ask? Are you offering?”
“No!” I made a grab for my drink and tipped it to my lips, only to realize there were a few drops left, and the ice hit my lips ungracefully. “No,” I repeated. “I’ve never done that.”