Page 13 of Love You Truly

The dart flies wild and barely makes it onto the board at all, scoring me a measly two points. Damn him. Not only is he ruining my anonymous night out, he’s ruining my darts game.

“Do you mind?” I take the remaining darts from Mary, and she goes to the chalkboard.

Felix looks from me to the dartboard and takes another step back. Crossing his arms, he smirks as though he’s getting ready for an epic fail. Even when we were together, he loved it when I fell short of any objective. Brownies overbaked? He smoothed the hair off my forehead and told me it was okay that I wasn’t a chef. Plants underwatered? He gave me a condescending smile and said he hoped I’d do better at keeping our future children alive.

Secretly—or not so secretly—he seemed to enjoy my little failings. They provided proof that I needed him more than I actually did.

I hone my focus. Hell, if I’m going to lose with him watching. I line up my next dart and let it fly.

It hits the bull’s-eye like it has a homing device stored in its little feathers. The success of the first bull’s-eye fuels three more, and now my score on the chalkboard rivals Mary’s. Okay, not exactly because she’s trounced me in the past four rounds, but if she throws blindfolded, I have a fighting chance now.

I turn back to Felix with a plastered-on smile. “Nice seeing you, but I’m going to enjoy the rest of my evening with my friend.”

Mary gives him a little wave. “Bye, Felicia,” she says in her clipped accent. But Felix doesn’t take the hint.

In fact, he steps closer. I feel the rush of air when the door to the place opens and closes again, but I don’t look away from Felix.

“Just when we were getting along so well, you have to go and be rude.”

“I’m not being rude. I’m asking you to leave me alone.”

He takes another step closer crowding me. His finger reaches out and he boops me on the nose. It’s a too-familiar gesture, but Felix takes liberties, inserts himself into situations by referencing some tiny past interaction like it was an intimate moment.

“Sorry, babe. Not until we talk.”

Shuddering at the sound of the word ‘babe,’ I exhale a long breath and close my eyes. As I count backward from five, I calculate the odds that Felix will be gone when I open them. Pretty close to zero, and I’m good at math.

“She told you to go. I’d listen if I were you.” The voice is deep, gruff, threatening.

When my eyes open, I’m surprised to see Dash Corbett nearly burning a hole through Felix’s face with his fiery glare.

Oh god.

As if the day weren’t going horribly enough, I’m pummeled with another level of humiliation, one I’ve successfully blocked for the past two weeks.

After our run-in at the grocery store a month ago, something kept nagging at me. Something about the gentlemanly grace of a guy who kept me from plummeting to certain injury in a sea of pickle juice, mixed with something so hot that my skin still reacts from the mere memory.

I couldn’t explain it at the time and I still can’t. I’ve known the Corbett family most of my life and I even dated the middle brother, Jax, briefly a few years ago. Or more like I hooked up with him. Potato, potah-to.

No doubt, the Corbett siblings have the impression of me as a snooty, man-crazy socialite. In fact, I acted haughty and gossipy when I ran into PJ with a billionaire in a movie theater a month back because I’d gotten a bad grade in one of my accounting classes, and it was easier to hide behind a mask than let my disappointment show.

It's how I roll. Feelings are mine and only mine. Perceptions offer a safe hiding place for things I don’t want people to know.

But after my collision with Dash, thoughts of him disrupted my days. Two weeks later, I couldn’t make them stop. So after losing one too many dart games one night and consuming one too many black and tans, I sent him a text.

And asked him out.

Then, crickets.

Yup, he ignored the text. Didn’t merely turn me down. He didn’t respond at all. And now here he is in all his glare-y splendor, facing off against my ex for some reason. It doesn’t excuse his failure to reply to a text in a timely manner. Ignoring me is just plain rude.

I wish I didn’t notice the way a lock of his dark hair falls over his forehead like he just finished shoving his hands in it and a stray piece fell loose. His pale blue eyes are arresting this close up, begging me to stare, but I force my gaze downward, snagging on the rough stubble that makes him look like he just rolled out of bed after having sex for forty-eight hours straight.

For a moment, my mind wanders to what that would be like. Then I shake myself out of the trance I’ve somehow fallen under and remind myself that asking him on a date was purely a business move, which is irrelevant now anyway.

If he simply forgot to reply, I’m guessing he remembers now. He offers me that lady-killer smile of his, only I’m not falling for it. Well, I’m trying not to, but it’s difficult.

It’s even harder when he turns and fixes an icy stare squarely on Felix. My insides twist and heat at how much I like it.

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