spoon she bounced on her finger slipped and clattered off the table and onto the floor. She didn’t reach for it; instead, she finally looked him in the eyes again, the kind of measuring look that at least said he had her complete attention. She was trying to decide what she thought.
“You were off-limits. I wasn’t kidding when I said that your home and family were my safe place.” She had to believe him. These confessions weren’t easy, and if they were for nothing? “Or how much you all meant to me. Nick is my best friend, I love your family like my own. More than my own. They never measured up when they were around. It wasn’t a rejection, I just didn’t know how to do it right. You weren’t the only one who was young and stupid. I may be older, but I’m definitely not the smarter of the two of us.”
His heart beat so hard his lungs felt battered.
“There was a girl at the apartment with you. I only realized it as I was running off and I heard her call out to you.”
“That girl?” He stopped, trying to recall who it was. Yes, there had been a girl... “You’re going to call me a pig, but I actually can’t remember her name. I sent her home right after you left.” He let go of her hand and retrieved his own spoon. Once he’d got some dessert on it, he held the spoon to her lips to distract her.
Her lips parted and she leaned forward, taking his spoon into her mouth, her warm brown eyes never leaving his. He could feel the slow seductive movement of her tongue across the bowl of the spoon before he slid it back through her closed lips. Good God, he was getting too wrapped up in the idea that this was a date. His heart sped up for an entirely different reason.
“She wasn’t the girl I wanted that night.” His voice went hoarse and he had to clear his throat to add, “So I sent her away, and spent a long, miserable night, staring at the ceiling and waiting for Nick to get back from his date.”
Here beside her, the goose bumps racing down her arms were impossible to miss. He ran the back of one knuckle down her arm, then shrugged out of his jacket and wrapped it around her, as much to warm her as to help his own willpower—hide that soft golden skin beckoning him. And maybe break the sudden heavy, sensual atmosphere that had descended on them. It had to go if he wanted to hold on to any scrap of his sanity.
No more feeding her or touching her. He needed to get the atmosphere back to a more playful, jovial mood. He took a bite for himself, an excuse to make himself stop gazing into her eyes. “Him getting back? Made things worse because your brother always seems to pick up screamers.”
“Oh, God, I don’t need those details,” she said, laughing a little as she pulled the jacket around her and snuggled in, then focused back on him, latching onto what he’d said. “I didn’t misread you. You wanted me?”
“I’m an idiot, but I’m not that big an idiot. Of course I did. You’re...” He stopped again. “You’re great.” Great. Not perfect, he wouldn’t say perfect. His heart felt too big for him in that moment. Enlarged. Sluggish. Sore. It all felt too big for him.
If he’d taken her up on it that night, maybe he’d be able to ignore that want now, but that wasn’t Grace’s style. Maybe she didn’t even want him anymore the way he wanted her.
She shifted in her seat, turning more toward him. Open, inviting. Those walls were coming down. That had to be good. It was almost too much to hope that they could return to being friends.
“I spent the whole night thinking of what I wished I could have done differently.” She whispered her own confession.
“Just one night?” he asked, thankful for the opening to try and get things back on less shaky ground. “I spent considerably more time than that.”
“No. Not just one night. But, well, my rewind fantasies of that night were not very, you know, good. In a sexy way. They were mostly about me dragging that girl out by the hair and keying your car.”
That was easier to smile at. Like she’d ever do either of those things. “If you’d keyed that car I would’ve never noticed,” he said, taking another bite of the dessert. “I still have it, though.”
“You do not.” The waiter replaced her dropped spoon, and Grace reached for it and helped herself to a bite this time.
“Yes, I do. It’s at a shop that restores old cars now. They’re gutting and rebuilding it. So, if you decide to key it in the future, I will notice and be very sad. So let’s keep talking about how sad it is that we’re both so hot and can’t have one another.”
“I never said I was hot.”
“No, that was me. I implied it. I thought you’d be better at reading between the lines than that. Or we could talk about why your—what did you call them, rewind fantasies? Why weren’t they satisfying? I’m told that fantasy me is a stallion.”
She laughed then, so brightly that he instantly felt better. Like the whole of their history was being wiped clean. They could be friends, continue on in one another’s lives, hang out with Nick and do whatever it was that people did when they hung out in groups. Go the movies without formal wear. Something.
“Well, that was the other thing.” She sobered, shaking her head as her cheeks began to turn pink. “I wasn’t... See, I had this idea that you would’ve been...my first time. So I didn’t just make a stupid and unaccountably brave move for me, but for my experience level.”
His head snapped back as her words settled and coldness washed over him.
“You were...?” He must have heard that wrong. “You were a virgin? You were coming to me because you were a virgin?”
“I HAD THIS HAZY, insubstantial fantasy heavily lacking satisfying details...about you being the first.” Grace shrugged as she said it, like it meant nothing. Like that didn’t make it worse.
Liam sat back, at a loss for words.
“I’m not still a virgin,” she hastened to add. “I’m not still holding out for you or anything pathetic like that.”
Once again, she had misinterpreted his behavior.
“No, I imagine if you were still holding out for me, you’d have been a damned sight happier to see me than you were,” he muttered, his hand lifting to rub the back of his neck. “The guy you ended up with.”
“Brad.”
“Brad.” He repeated the name, as if it weren’t giving him those rewind fantasies about beating the hell out of Brad. “I don’t want details! Just... Was he good to you?”
“I guess so. I haven’t had very serious relationships. I always pick badly,” she said, shrugging again.
“Stop shrugging. Was he the one with the motorcycle?” If her rebound guy had...
She nodded, mouth twisting to the side. No doubt she could tell by the tone in his voice, which he had no hope of disguising, exactly what he wanted to do to Brad.
“Did he survive?” Earlier, Liam hadn’t thought to ask about the ex-boyfriend, but now that he knew his name and that he’d hurt
