Page 8 of For Eva

“I’m not that drunk. It’s all good, I swear.”

She sighed, her shoulders dropping in defeat. “Okay, go. Do whatever the new plan is. I love you. But remember:muh-thur-fuh-kur.”

She released me and clenched her teeth into a fake grin as Danny worked his way out of the booth.

“Later,” Matt said with a wave.

I started through the room, my head hazy and my legs a bit wobbly, then turned back to sneak a quick smile at Danny. I saw he was still with Denise, her hand clasped tight around his arm.

Fuuuuuck.

When he finally began to walk toward me, there was a tightness in his jaw that hadn’t been there before. Without a word, he pulled me against him, steering us toward the exit before it even registered that I was back in his arms again.

“What did she say?” I asked, not sure I actually wanted to hear the answer.

He sucked in a deep breath and placed his hand on the door. “Just tell me one thing,” he began, looking over at me before we pushed through to the swarms of people cruising Sunset. “She doesn’t really own a gun…right?”

“I’ve missed the fuck out of you, Eva.”

I could barely remember how we got to his apartment. I couldn’t recall any conversation, only the faint sounds of a song I’d never heard before coming from the radio of his old Ford Bronco and swirls of pink and blue lights dancing in the palm trees that lined the streets. And then, suddenly, I was stepping over guitar cases and old pizza boxes, pulling off my shirt and tossing it somewhere among the clothes strewn across his bedroom.

“Really?” I panted as I unbuttoned his shirt and pushed it off his shoulders.

He answered by crushing his lips against mine and pulling me onto the mattress on the floor. His body hovered over mine, our bare chests rising to meet one another in quick, shallow breaths.

“I mean it,” he said, holding my gaze. “I’ve missed you more than you know.”

Fuck. My plan.I’d almost forgotten, too tangled up in him and the moment that I hadn’t been able to focus on anything other than how fast I could get my clothes off.But this was too easy. Too perfect. I felt like an evil genius, rubbing my hands together, relishing the imminent demise of my nemesis as a list of possible responses to his confession scrolled through my brain.

A childish yet concisesucks to be you.

A melodramatic yet powerfulregret is a wasted emotion.

A crassyet straightforwardshut up and fuck me.

But none of these made it to my lips, because a thousand stars were bursting inside of me, each one being devoured by the black holes in his eyes.

“I’ve missed you, too.”

And that was the moment my hastily woven plan unraveled. The moment I knew it had been so poorly constructed that it was bound to come tumbling down and leave me lying in the rubble.

There wasn’t one damn thing I could do to save myself. So, I closed my eyes as my misguided intentions collapsed around me, leaving only a tiny seed of hope that Danny Kincaid would finally fix what he’d broken.

FIVE

Eva

January 1988

Adistant sound outside the bedroom window caused my eyelids to flutter. A rhythmic vibration that stopped momentarily, then started up again. The sound grew closer as I drifted over the threshold into full consciousness, and I extended my arm behind me to the other side of the bed, reaching for a pillow to cover my ears.

But rather than landing on a pile of feathers, my hand landed on someone’s head.

What the…

My brain flipped through images of the night before. The Rainbow, colored lights, tequila shots…

My eyes flew open, and I gasped.

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