Page 51 of Needing Happily Ever After

Why should it be any different now?

He wanted Katie, and he’d be damned if he was going to give up that easily.

He’d had too much to drink. That was clear.

She needed to talk to him and clear up what had just happened back there. She risked a glance over at him in the passenger seat. Damon stared out the window, a hard line set on his mouth, his forehead wrinkled as if he were in deep thought. And maybe he was. But he was also drunk.

Katie shook her head and focused on the road. She needed to talk to him, desperately. But there was no point in bringing anything up in his condition.

Nothing good would come from that.

Instead, Katie pressed her own lips into a hard line and tried to ignore the tension between them as she drove them home in silence.

The best thing they could do was just get to bed, so Damon could sleep off whatever he’d had to drink and maybe Katie would have a chance to process the swirl of feelings that more and more were consuming her thoughts.

“Okay, Damon.” She finally spoke as she unlocked the front door. “I think maybe if—”

He cut her off by wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her in through the door into the cottage.

“What are you doing?”

He pressed her up against the wall and it was clear to both of them exactly what he was doing. Her body reacted immediately to him, an instinctual response, but she could smell the whisky on his breath. It reminded her of what had happened and exactly why it was a better idea just to go to bed.

“You know what I’m doing.” He leaned in and breathed heavy against her mouth.

Katie shook her head and turned away. “Damon, I think you should—”

“Kiss you?” He moved to kiss her, but at the last minute, she dodged him.

Katie worked hard to keep her voice neutral and non-confrontational. “You’re drunk, Damon. You need to—”

“What I need is to kiss my wife.” His voice held an edge, but still his eyes danced with mischief, as if he’d forgotten that they’d just had a blow-out in the kitchen of the neighborhood pub.

And she was definitely not going to kiss him. Not now. Not like this.

“No,” Katie said gently. “You really need to go to bed.”

Damon took a step back and assessed her. “I don’t,” he said after a moment. “It’s actually the last thing I need to do.” He shook his head and walked into the small kitchen. He grabbed a half-drunk bottle of wine they’d corked a few nights earlier. “Have a drink with me? I think we should talk.”

“I’m really not in the mood.”

He ignored her and poured out two glasses, sloshing some of the red onto the floor. “Here.” He thrust a glass in her direction a moment later. “Just a sip. Besides, don’t you think you owe me?”

She grabbed the glass before it spilled everywhere and glared at him. “Owe you? What is it exactly that you think I owe you for?”

Damon drank deeply from his own glass before putting it down hard on the table. “You kissed another man, Katie. That’s adultery.”

He slurred on the last word and Katie clenched her teeth together.

She shook her head and put the glass down next to his. “You’re an asshole and an idiot.”

“I may be the idiot.” Damon stopped her with his words before she could leave. “But you’re the asshole, Katie.”

Her whole body shook, but she didn’t bother replying. With an exhale, she turned away.

“At least I was honest.”

His words slapped her across the back and almost took her out at her knees. Slowly, she turned. “What?” Her voice was incredulous, barely more than a whisper. “You were what?”

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