Page 90 of The Best of Us

“You’re about to find out.” She chewed on her lip and swayed as if the room spun.

“Hits you that fast?” I stepped forward and caught her waist.

“That fast.” She held on to my forearms and peered up at me.

“How about I get you to bed?” I offered. “I’ll order food, and you can rest until it’s here.” I watched her for another moment, wondering if I’d have to carry her into her bedroom, all the while trying to prevent my brain from imagining the many creative ways I wanted to make love to her.

Dangerous, that’s what she truly was to me.

Allowing me to feel too much. Too fast. Tooeverything.

Dangerous because in sixty seconds, she’d already made me forget I was supposed to be pushing her away in preparation of losing her.

She had me forgetting I didn’t deserve her.

Even worse, she was dangerous because she had me believing I did.

“Constantine?” She held onto my arms even tighter.

I placed my hands at her waist, drawing our bodies closer. “Yeah?”

“I may have had something to drink after that call,” she said in a soft voice, “but I didn’t run.”

I lowered my forehead to hers, my breath quickening as that truth settled in my mind. That should have been my first thought, but I was so accustomed to thinking of worst-case scenarios that I forgot there were other ways to respond.

“How are you already changing me, and it’s only been since Wednesday that you came back into my life?” I lifted my head and hands, touching her face. The pads of my thumbs swept over her high cheekbones as I stared into her eyes.

“Well, that’s fairly easy to answer, even with bourbon in me.” She hiccuped, and her lips tipped into a shy smile of embarrassment. “It’s because I’m not changing you. People don’t change that fast.”

“No? What is it, then?”

A genuine smile crossed her lips and reached her eyes. “You’re just letting your guard down. Showing me your heart. That’s not change, that’s courage. And something tells me you’re a man not lacking in that department.”

She sighed, and I had a feeling the alcohol was pulling her thoughts out more easily than they’d come without it.

I returned my hands to her hips. “Well, I never wanted to lower it before, but no one else has ever made me want to put it up so damn high, either.”

“Quite the conundrum.” She lifted her brows. “I have a proposition to make, then.”

“This a bourbon-induced one?” The side of my mouth hiked up into a half-smile.

She hiccuped. “One or two more minutes and it will be.”

“Then you better hurry so we can close this deal.” The fact she’d managed to turn my mood around and had me smiling so damn fast was telling in itself. She did bring out a better side of me, a side I’d probably only ever let her and Colin see.

“Well,” she began, fidgeting with the hem of her shirt, eyes lowered between us, “seeing as I want to push you away so I don’t get my hopes up about us, and from the sounds of it, you’re suffering from the same problem . . . what if, and hear me out, our pushiness cancels each other out?” She let go of her shirt and looked up at me. “That made more sense in my head than how it sounded out loud.”

“Agree not to push each other away. Is that what you’re proposing?”

She pointed at the Apple watch on my wrist. “Mm-hmm. And you better hurry,” she said with a laugh, followed by another hiccup, “because Daddy’s bourbon is doing its thing.”

I laughed. Fuck me, I laughed at the Southern twang lacing her words. “Did you just drop a ‘daddy’ on me?”

Her cheeks flushed, and she laughed back. And fuck me twice, that sound alone could make angels sing and rejoice.

“I did just go Kentucky on you, didn’t I?”

“That you did, ma’am.” I stepped back, hoping she could keep her balance, and extended my hand. “You have yourself a deal.”

---