Page 51 of A Heart of Bluestone

I suck the insides of my cheeks as I watch him go. But only when he’s dropped into the leather armchair and uncorking the bottle do I feel safe enough to leave the bar.

I hit the cans on the table.

Courtney flinches and blinks at me.

“We should be quick.” I drop into my chair. “Before this place gets a little out of hand.”

She thins her mouth, then gives a curt nod. Her gaze cuts to the window again, but she takes the can in her grip.

She sips.

I drink faster. Fast enough that little bubbles crawl up my throat. Then my shoulders jerk with a fright as a cackle splits the air.

Ugh, Mildred.

She’s so annoying with her loud, obnoxious voice, booming above most of the others. Her only match in noise is Landon, and heismatching her, with his constant laughs that make me want to rip out his throat in his sleep.

“—went down like a stack of cauldrons,” she’s shouting over the laughter, a grin in her own voice. “Dray knocked him out, like that.”

My mouth twists. I drink some more, the weight in my hand lessening, and I think it’s almost finished.

“He must not be coming,” Courtney says right before Mildred jumps up on the coffee table.

“And he took a swing, like that—”

I glance over at her.

She gestures the move, swinging her elbow through the air, an imitation of a strike.

“Or he is still at his lesson,” I say, but I watch Mildred as she switches up her performance into an imitation of a falling rugby player, and it’s definitely an exaggeration because no one falls with their arms waving about the place.

“For almost four hours?” Courtney scoffs.

“Uh, yeah, it’s skiing.” I resist the urge to roll my eyes. “Those lessons can go on all day.”

Mildred jumps off the coffee table with her fists raised in the air. Some scattered cheers come from her audience of aristos and gentry alike, seniors and sophomores who huddle around the fireplace.

My mouth twists even more, a sour look that I shift to the armchair. The one Dray sits in.

Bet he’s loving this—all the praise, the attention.

Disgusting.

But when I look, my insides go cold all over.

He isn’t even paying attention to Mildred, to anything she says. His mouth is on Melody Green.

Melody, not quite straddled, isperchedon his lap, her legs tucked up and her fingers trailing down his sweater.

Dray’s hand grips the meat of her thigh, as though he can graze the softness of her skin through the denim.

Melody bites his bottom lip, a gentle bite that she drags over the flesh, then releases with a wicked, triumphant grin.

He doesn’t mirror it.

From beneath long dark lashes, the crushed glass blue of his eyes cut to me—and there, they stay.

On me.

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