Page 50 of My Favorite Bad Decision
I wish I could stay.
The dance floor is crowded, the music varying wildly—country, pop, rap. They put on something salsa-ish, and when Alex demands that I dance with him as he refuses to dance with his mother and sister, I follow him onto the floor. He shows me the basic three steps to the dance and insists that I stop watching my feet. Eventually, I comply.
“So if things fall through with him,” Alex says nodding toward Miller, “give me a call.”
“As I have said many times, I am notwithMiller,” I reply, raising a brow.
“Oh really,Kitten?” he asks with a sly smile. “Look, I know you have a boyfriend or whatever, but you cannot expect me to believe that there is nothing going on there. If not on your end, there definitely is on his.”
“I assure you there is not. When I leave here, I won’t see him again for ages.” The thought brings a lump to my throat.
He spins me. “Let’s put this to a little test then.”
“A test?”
“Hang on.” He walks to the DJ booth and returns a moment later. “I asked him to play a slow song after this. A hundred bucks says that Miller is over here thesecondit starts because he’s not about to let you slow dance with anyone else. He barely wanted to let you dance with me tothis,and we’re a foot apart.”
I roll my eyes. “This is the easiest hundred bucks I’ll ever make.”
“We’ll see,” he replies.
But when the final notes of the song fade away and “A Thousand Years” by Christina Perri begins, Miller appears back beside us.
“I’m reclaiming Kit,” he says firmly—not a request. A demand. Alex releases me, winking behind Miller’s back and mouthing the wordsone hundred bucks.
“What’s all the smiling about?” Miller asks.
I shake my head. “Alex being dumb.”
I should probably tell Miller I’m done, but when his hand slides to the small of my back and jerks me against him, I go willingly. His hold is exactly as possessive as I knew it would be.
“I’m shocked you’re out here,” I tell him. “It runs contrary to the whole ‘I’m ruggedly masculine’ thing.”
“I didn’t realize you found me ruggedly masculine.”
“That wasyousaying you were ruggedly masculine—not me. It was pretty arrogant of you, actually.”
He pulls me closer. My cheek is pressed to his sternum and his chin rests against the top of my head. I breathe him in—soap and fabric softener—and count the beats of his heart beneath my ear. Maybe, in some parallel world, there’s a version of me that doesn’t have to walk away, and that version will smile at him when the song ends, grateful that he’s hers, eager to strip him out of that T-shirt and fall asleep against his bare chest.
Among other things.
We don’t say another word during the three-minute duration of the song, but I know even as it’s happening that I will replay these three minutes in my head for the rest of my natural life.
The song’s dying notes echo across the floor. Miller is slow to release me, and I’m slower to move away. When I glance up at him, neither of us is smiling. This is, obviously, all we’re going to get. This dance—this trip. It should have been more, but my primary regret is that I didn’t relish every second. That from the moment I first saw him at the airport, I ever willingly left his side, that I slept at all when I could have been staring at his sleeping profile instead.
“Well,” I whisper, “I guess we should head out.”
His finger slides into the waistband of my jeans to keep me in place.
“Kit,” he says, his gaze burning straight through me, “tell me you’re not marrying that guy.”
My shoulders sag. In some ways, this moment makes me think that Ishouldmarry Blake. That when I fall for someone, it’s alwaysthis…It’s always intensely painful. It always leads to this thing inside me that aches and can’t seem to stop, and now instead of aching for Rob, I get to ache for him and Miller both.
“No,” I reply. “I’m going to end it when I get home.”
His mouth opens and then shuts as if there were words there, words he’d be better off not saying. It’s for the best. “Good.”
I walk off the dance floor, him in my wake. The Arnaults want to stay for another beer, so we hug them goodbye and exchange contact info, and then Miller and I walk out, him close to my side as he hails a cab, his arm around me as if to warn the world that I’m not fair game.
