Chapter 37
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Harper
Song- If You Wanna, The Vaccines
I can't remember the last time I laughed this hard.
Ace has one arm around my waist and the other holding his beer above both our heads as we two-step through a crowd of drunk locals who have absolutely no idea what they're doing. The band is too loud. The floor is sticky. And I am so stupidly, ridiculously happy.
"Spin," Ace says.
"I can't spin, I've had three tequilas."
"Spin, Goldie."
He spins me anyway. I crash into his chest laughing, nearly taking out an older couple beside us, who give me a look. Ace tips his hat at them with a grin so charming that they forgive us instantly. The woman actually blushes.
"You're dangerous with that smile," I tell him.
"You're dangerous with those legs. We're even."
The song shifts to something slower, and he pulls me in. One hand on my lower back, the other holding mine against his chest. My head fits perfectly under his chin.
"This reminds me of junior year," I say.
"The one where you got us kicked out?"
"I got us kicked out? You started a fight with that guy."
"He was looking at your ass."
"Everyone was looking at my ass. I was wearing those white jeans."
I love teasing him about this.
"Exactly. And I handled it."
"You got hit in the face with a pool cue, Ace."
"And I handled it."
I laugh into his chest. He presses his lips to the top of my head, and I feel him smile against my hair.
This. This is what I missed. Not just the heat, not just the way he touches me.
This. The easy part. The part where we're just two people who find each other funnier than anyone else in the room.
The part where the world shrinks down to his voice and my laugh and a dance floor full of strangers who don't matter.
We used to be like this all the time. Before I left. Before the years of silence turned us into something heavier. Tonight feels like digging through rubble and finding the original thing underneath. And it’s still in one piece. It never shattered.
"You remember prom?" he asks.
"You mean when you showed up on a horse?"
"It was a grand gesture."
"It shit on the principal's lawn, Ace."
"Still a grand gesture."
I tip my head back and look up at him. His eyes are soft and crinkled at the edges from smiling.
He's got a bruise forming along his jaw from the ride and dirt still under his fingernails, his shirt's unbuttoned one too many from the heat. He looks like trouble. He looks like my home, and finally, I’m starting to be excited about what my future holds again.
"I'm really glad I came back," I say.
His hand tightens on my waist. "I'm really glad you did too."
The song ends. The band kicks into something fast and rowdy, and the floor fills up with boots and hollers. Ace steps back, points at me, and mouths don't move as he turns toward the bar.
I watch him go. Can't help it. The way he moves through a crowd, his shoulders loose, hat tipped. Women track him as he passes. He doesn't notice. Or if he does, he doesn't care.
He reaches the bar. Leans against it with one boot on the rail. And then he looks at me.
Across the entire bar. Through the crowd, through the noise, through the smoke and the colored lights and the bodies moving between us. He holds my gaze.
I can’t help but smile as I put on a little show for him, and only him. Never once does he break eye contact.
The laughter fades out of his face. Something that starts in his eyes and moves down through his jaw, his shoulders, the way his grip shifts on the beer bottles. A stillness that has nothing to do with calm.
My stomach tightens.
The room doesn't change. The music doesn't stop. People are still dancing. But something between us has shifted, and every nerve ending in my body knows it.
He sets both beers down on the bar.
Doesn't break eye contact.
He pushes off the rail and starts walking toward me.
My heart is slamming against my ribs.
He's ten feet away. Close enough now that I can see the shift in his breathing. The way his chest rises slower. The way his jaw is set. The way he's looking at me like I'm the only thing in this room that's real, and he's deciding exactly what he's going to do about it.
He stops in front of me.
The music pounds around us. Someone bumps my shoulder passing by, and I don't even flinch. I can't move. I can't look away. I'm pinned to the floor by the way this man is looking at me, and every inch of my skin is on fire.
He doesn't say a word.
He lifts his hand slowly and presses his thumb to his bottom lip. Drags it across. His eyes locked on mine the entire time.
A command.
My breath catches. My pulse goes haywire. Heat floods between my thighs so fast my knees nearly buckle.
I know what that means.
I know exactly what that means.
It means run.
Because when I run, he chases.
His chin drops. Just slightly. His eyes don't move from mine.
They don't blink. There isn't a trace of the man who was spinning me on the dance floor five minutes ago, cracking jokes about prom and bar fights.
That man is gone. The one standing in front of me is the version that makes my hands shake, and my thighs press together, and my brain go completely, dangerously blank.
My lips part. My chest is heaving.
He doesn't move. He's waiting. Giving me the head start because that's the game. I run, he counts, he finds me. And when he finds me, I'm his. Completely. No rules. No limits. No stopping until he decides we're done.
And that is the most freeing part of my life. I trust him to know my body, my mind, better than anyone else. Only he can do this with me.
I take a step back.
His jaw flexes.
I take another.
Something flickers in his eyes, a barely leashed hunger that makes my entire body clench.
I turn on my heel and walk toward the back of the bar.
I don't run yet. Not here. Not inside. I keep my pace steady, weaving through the crowd, feeling his gaze burning into my back like a physical thing.
My heart is pounding so hard I can hear it over the music.
My legs are trembling. I push through the back door into the night air, and the second the door closes behind me, I run.
Night air in my lungs. Adrenaline floods every vein.
Ace picked this bar in the middle of nowhere on purpose. It’s close enough to Sterling Ranch that it’s safe.
It’s somewhere we’ve played before.
I don't look back.
I don't need to. I can feel him coming. I usually get a minute head start. And that’s all I need. Because I want him to catch me.