I understood what he was doing—what I didn’t get was why.
“Evan.” My voice was barely a whisper, as if volume might push him out the door. “We both want it. I do, and I know you do, too.”
He stood up, then turned to look at me. I dragged the covers up to my neck, needing to keep at least part of me hidden. I’d already exposed too much of myself to him.
“Don’t you?” I pleaded when he said nothing. My voice was laced with a note of insecurity, and I hated myself for it. I watched the expressions shift across his face like clouds upon the wind, and fear slashed through me. “You’re not seriously going to stand there and tell me I’m wrong? I felt it, Evan. I felt you.”
His expression was flat, but his eyes were like a storm when they met mine. “I have done and will do a lot of things that you would probably find reprehensible. But I will never, never, lie to you.”
I shook my head, confused and wary.
“Last night—what happened in the alley.” He shook his head. “It was a mistake,” he said, and with that single word, I understood everything. Whatever he’d seen in me—whatever he’d wanted—I’d managed to destroy it. He might have lost control last night, but in the end, I was dragonbait—some weak female who needed rescuing. But it wasn’t a princess that Evan Black wanted. It never had been.
“A mistake,” I repeated dully. I thought of the way I’d felt in his arms. The way he’d kept the nightmares at bay.
Yeah, maybe that was a mistake. Because he’d given me peace—and I damn sure didn’t deserve it.
“You’re a fucking idiot. You know that, right?”
I gaped at Flynn over the coffee I was sipping to nurse my raging headache. “What the hell?”
I’d called Kat first for cupcakes and sympathy, but she’d had to go into the coffee shop to cover someone else’s shift. I’d ended up at Flynn’s, figuring that if anyone could cheer me up it would be him. So far, I was less than impressed with his technique. “When you said I should come over, I thought it was so you could make me feel better.”
“That was before I knew the full story. And that you plan to just let the guy walk. Like I said. Fucking. Idiot.”
“Let him walk? He practically sprinted.” I ran my fingers through my hair. “He doesn’t want me. And I sure as hell shouldn’t want him.”
He added some Tabasco to the Bloody Mary he was mixing, then slid it onto the counter in front of me.
I raised my steaming coffee mug. “Headache.”
“Trust me. This’ll knock it out a hell of a lot better than coffee.”
I rolled my eyes. Flynn held a firm belief in the healing powers of vodka. But despite my doubts, I sipped the drink—and had to acknowledge that it was pretty damn good.
I was sitting at the breakfast bar that was attached to the kitchen island. For the eight months we’d lived together, that had been my usual weekend perch. I’m not exactly competent in the kitchen, but Flynn can make anything taste good. At that moment, he was scrambling eggs, making hash browns, and frying up sausage patties, and the kitchen smelled like heaven.
He moved between the island and the stove with casual efficiency dressed in gray sweatpants and a John Barleycorn saloon T-shirt. He was damn good-looking, with deep-set eyes and a swoop of hair that fell over his brow, though he constantly pushed it out of the way. His obsession with jogging and biking kept him in shape, giving him a tight ass and the kind of biceps that made even the tallest woman feel petite. He could cook—which in my book was a plus—and I happened to know that he was a lot of fun in bed.
He flipped two sausage patties, then turned to me, his eyes narrowed. “What?”
I held up my hands in a gesture of innocence.
“You have that look. What’s on your mind?”
“I don’t have a look,” I countered.
“I’ve known you forever. Trust me when I say you have a look.”
“There is no look. But if there was a look it would be one of confusion.”
“And you’re confused because …?”
“I’m just wondering how you’re justified in giving relationship advice. I’m pretty sure you’ve gone out on a first date with every woman in Chicago, but somehow that whole second date thing eludes you.”
“I’m highly selective,” he said. He pulled himself up to sit on the granite counter. “This isn’t an exercise in dramatic irony, is it? You’re not going to blurt out that even though you’ve been pining after Evan all these years, now you realize it was really me you wanted all along?”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” I said. “And I think your potatoes are burning.”
“Like hell they are,” he said, but he slid off the counter and turned down the heat, then started filling a plate for each of us.
I absolutely loved Flynn to death, but I wasn’t in love with him any more than he was in love with me, and I never had been. Of course, that hadn’t stopped me from sleeping with him all those years ago. He’d been angry at his father. I’d been angry at the world. He’d stolen the keys to his dad’s Harley, and we’d rocketed down Sheridan Road all the way to Wisconsin.
I didn’t remember which one of us initiated it. I only knew that he’d wanted to get laid, and I’d wanted the release. More than that, I’d wanted to get my first time over with. I wanted to make the fantasy that Evan would be my first go away. Because if I could put an end to that, maybe I could put an end to it all.
It hadn’t worked. Thankfully, our experiment in sexual healing hadn’t messed up our friendship. It had been weird for about a week. Then we’d gotten drunk on the beach, confessed that even though it had been fun and felt nice, neither one of us wanted a repeat performance, and continued on the way we’d been going. Only now I had the added benefit of being able to talk to him about sex stuff. Considering he came at the whole dating and girl thing from the perspective of a straight male, that was a pretty handy perk.
“Let’s back up to this idiot thing,” I said as he slid a plate in front of me. “Pretend you’re a guy—”
He cocked his head, cupped his balls, and lifted a brow.
I rolled my eyes. “Pretend you’re a guy who’s just walked away from a woman he’s attracted to.”