Page 48 of 28 Dates

I reach for my martini and spin the thin stem of the glass with my fingers. “Why did you two break up?”

And why didn’t you tell me?

Chapter 17

Jonas

That’s the easiest question to answer and the most impossible.

Easiest answer: She’s not you.

Yeah, like I’m saying that. Caitlin could possibly laugh in my face.

“I realized I didn’t love her,” I say instead and watch the color fade from Caitlin’s cheeks.

That pesky love word she seems to despise so much, although with Trey’s warning from weeks ago, I now understand why, at least in a sense.

It’s the perfect time to tell her and the worst timing. She might be sitting now, but her hand is on her coat. Everything about her says she’s set to leave, and it’s all I can do not to grab her by the wrist and force her to stay on the stool. With me, so I can soak up her smiles and her laughter and the way she teases Tucker and me so perfectly. She’s never mean-spirited. Caitlin doesn’t have a single bone or thought in her body that would ever make her be unkind to someone. Not even jokingly.

She’s simply too good for that kind of maliciousness. It’s only one of the thousand things I love about her.

Based on her silence and the way her jaw has unhinged, I’ve clearly stunned her.

Without thinking, I press my finger to the bottom of her jaw and close her mouth.

She shakes her head. “How? When?”

The why is staying locked in a very well-hidden box for the near future. “A couple weeks ago,” I tell her. “We were supposed to head out of town, but things weren’t great before that, and the closer it got, the more I realized I couldn’t do it. Not to her.”

“Oh.” Caitlin’s eyes are wide, and if I’m not mistaken, her face has paled. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.” I swallow down the bitter taste suddenly filling my beer and cringe. “There was something missing, I guess. I didn’t want to hurt her.”

“Of course you wouldn’t.” Caitlin’s eyes spark, like for some reason she feels the need to defend me. Against myself? It’d be strange if that didn’t shoot a blast of heat to my groin. “You’d never intentionally hurt anyone. You okay?”

She slides her hand toward me. As if to comfort me? I don’t need it. I squeeze her hand anyway. She’s chilly, and the desire to wrap her in my arms and warm her up is too intense. If I keep my hands on her, I’ll confess everything. I pull my hand back and curl my hand into my lap.

Jesus. Just touching her feeds my desire to take her. It feels so good to have her looking at me like this again, I almost want to make the lie worse andallowher to comfort me, when I’m the one who broke up with Ashley because I love the woman sitting in front of me.

How fucked up is this?

“I’m fine, Caty. Honest. I feel like I might have led her on, and that makes me feel like shit. But other than that, it’s the right thing.”

I take a bite out of a cracker and chew it slowly. I need a minute to get my head back on straight.

“Bummer,” Caitlin says, but her eyes are crinkled, and she’s waving her martini glass side to side. “Because if you were hurting, I was going to offer to stay awhile. Help you get drunk, relieve your pain and all that. Isn’t that what friends do?”

It’s what I did for her last week, but there’s only one way I want her relieving any pain, and the pain’s not in my heart but farther south.

But it sure as hell isn’t going to be tonight, regardless of the fact my dick is jumping at my zipper, loving the idea and picture she’s created.

“I think friends can hang out and get drunk for whatever reason. Can’t we?” I tip my beer glass against hers, clinking them together. I’m essentially daring her to stay and drink with me, and we both know what happens between us when there’s too much alcohol.

A heated, dark pink hue colors the apples of her cheeks, and she swallows slowly. It takes seconds for her to meet my gaze again, and when she does, her voice is husky, unable to hide anything she’s thinking. “Yeah. We can do that.”

Desire thickens her voice, and my blood boils inside of me, rolling quickly, headed straight to the head below my waist with all the best ideas.

It won’t happen, not tonight. But that doesn’t mean I can’t remind her how good we were together in other ways, too. Plus, that desire and heady look in her eyes is exactly what I needed to see. It’s the exact same thing I saw from her as I left her apartment earlier in the week.

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