Page 69 of The Rules

“This is our first date. I should be wining and dining you.”

“No,” she said, so firmly it startled him. “I don’t want to be Dylan Pierced. That’s not why this works.”

He was only fifty-percent sure she wasn’t playing off some hidden disappointment, but hell, they’d been sharing Chinese from a sketchy takeout joint for weeks. It would be kind of weird to start now with fancy wine lists. But then, she’d also enjoyed the hell out of that night they’d spent with the Jansen’s.

Shit. He wanted to get this right more than he thought possible.

“Why does it work, Dani?” he asked, stroking her hand with his thumb.

“It works because you’re my friend. Look, dating sucks. There’s so much pretense. Good impressions, extra effort. Then you get to this part, where you’re not pretending to be someone else anymore, where you’re wearing baggy clothes and shoveling ice cream into your mouth because you have cramps, and you start to feel like some magic slipped away.” She took a breath and his heartbeat echoed in his ears. “But I think that was the magic part. That was my favorite night in a long time. I don’t want you to play pretend for me and I don’t want to lie to you. This is good, Dylan. I’m happy.”

“I’m happy too.” The feeling was like seeing a face that’s familiar but you can’t place it. It had been a long time since he’d felt happy. He’d enjoyed himself, sure. He’d had fun, been content with his life. But right now, looking at her smiling, he remembered how it felt to be more than content. “It’s not going to be all takeout and dives, though,” he said. “You deserve the fancy nights too. Like the Jansens’ party. You’re coming to all of that stuff with me.”

“Already planning the second date, huh?”

He grinned. “You got me.”

“Well, I’m in for that too. As long as those future fancy nights end like that one did.”

“You might be perfect,” he said.

She tipped her chin and batted her eyelashes at him. “Took you long enough to figure that out.”

“Nah. I knew it from the start.” He just didn’t think perfect was his style.

He raised his hand and signaled the bartender for the check. “Come on,” he said. “I want to take you somewhere else.”

Dylan pulled up his GPS app on his phone and typed in an address that he wouldn’t let her see.

“Where’re we going?” Dani stepped gingerly over a crooked cobblestone, the high heel of her boot twisting.

He offered his arm and pivoted to cross the busy street. “A place I know.”

A few blocks later, they were walking down a set of concrete stairs. Dylan handed some cash to the big guy in a black t-shirt who guarded the door. When he let them pass into the basement bar, a wall of thick, damp heat hit her face, and she had to blink a few times to adjust her eyes to the darkness.

Dylan held tight to her hand, guiding them through a sea of people, over to the bar. There was a band on the small stage at the far end of the room where people were dancing, and the music was too loud for her to hear what he ordered. The little hairs at the nape of her neck, the ones too short to fit in her ponytail, curled and stuck to her skin in the humidity.

She took a seat on a barstool, and Dylan sidled up beside her, his front pressed to her back. He handed her a lowball glass with something pink inside, then dipped his head and brushed her temple with his lips. The atmosphere in this place was pure sex and that little touch of his mouth shot a lightning bolt deep in her belly. Maybe she did want to get Dylan Pierced.

“How’d you find this place?”

“A date took me here,” he answered, sipping his drink.

That warm, heady feeling started to deflate, like a slow leak in a balloon. But then he leaned closer and pressed his lips to her ear. “You texted me in the middle of it and I spent the rest of the night thinking about you. I’ve been wanting to take you here ever since.”

Her heart jumped. “When was this?”

“One week into your soulmate search.”

“One week?” she asked, her voice almost too quiet to reach him over the band.

He shrugged, giving a shy smile that looked strange on his face. Strange, but beautiful. He was beautiful. How could she not have seen this coming? It was like a veil had been lifted and she realized how stupid she was to think she could look at this face, touch every part of this man and not end up wanting to keep him.Destiny or chaos? How could they ever know, he’d said, but looking at him now, it felt like maybe that chemistry they’d always had was a tether keeping them connected until they were ready to follow the string and find each other. Maybe she hadn’t veered from that soulmate search after all.

She gulped her drink and turned to set the glass on the bar. “Dance with me.”

Dylan didn’t miss a beat. He swept an arm around her middle, lifting her off the stool and setting her on her feet. Her steps swayed as she followed him through a crowd of people—too many drinks, too many thoughts making her skin hot. Her hair curled around her temples, and she felt her mascara turning to liquid. She could only imagine what she looked like, melting under the heat and the dawn of all of these revelations.

But if the way Dylan stared at her as he pulled her close was any indication, maybe it wasn’t as bad as she thought.

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