Page 10 of Illicit Illustration

Yeah, I was well aware of her propensity to run away from uncomfortable situations. She’d been running away from me for years.

“Then I’ll have my running shoes on so I can catch you.”

“Oh, you’re smooth,” she chuckled, and I could just picture her blushing while she chewed on her lower lip.

“Seeing as we don’t have too much time left, why don’t we ask a few questions from the sheet?”

“Oh…yeah…the sheet. I completely forgot about that. Sometimes my brain gets started on a tangent and I can’t seem to get my train of thought back on the tracks.”

“You first, what question do you want me to answer?” I offered, curious which one she’d pick.

“What is one mistake you never want to repeat in life?”

Fuck. There were a lot of mistakes I wouldn’t want to repeat. Starting with not realizing how attracted I was to my best friend’s little sister. But it also would have been torture, because she needed to settle into who she was as an adult before some older guy tried to rope her into a relationship.

But there was one I was determined not to make now. And that was letting this opportunity go. Getting to know her better was worth the deception. At least on my part. Hopefully, in a few weeks, it would be on hers as well. If she freaked out, then I could just bowout after the reveal. It wasn’t like she hadn’t perfected avoiding me over the last few years. We’d get past it, even if she hated me.

“Not chasing opportunities. There are too many times in my life where I played it safe and regretted not taking the risk. The greater risk, the greater reward, right? I used to think that was bullshit, but there have been times I waited too long and missed the opportunity altogether.”

“So, are those regrets with women, or…?”

“No, not really. I just played life a little too safe when I was unsure of my direction, and now I’m playing catch up to get where I should have been in the first place.” I could’ve started my own shop earlier, but the fear of failure had kept me away from home years longer than I’d intended. I’d spent years in a city I hated, working for someone else when I could have taken the chance on myself, since I eventually ended up doing that anyway.

“I can relate to that.”

“How so?” It had always seemed that she knew exactly where she wanted her career to go. I knew she was doing freelance—and that wasn’t without its own set of risks—but she seemed so confident in her work.

“I let my fear of rejection keep me from putting myself out there. Now I feel like I’m way behind on life in general.” She paused, my heart rate increasing while I waited for her to finish her answer. “And I’m tired of watching other people get what I want. I want to be adventurous and do things that scare me for once in my life. I’ve been scared of things and some people for too long.”

“What people are you afraid of?”

Charley had said Haz was scared of me, but I wanted to know why. Other than the obvious incident that happened a few years ago. One I wish I could take back because of how it’d driven a wedge between us.

“There’s a…friendI used to have who I distanced myself from when something embarrassing happened a few years ago that I miss. We used to talk a lot when I was younger, but then hemoved away. He’s been back for a while now, but I saw something I shouldn’t have, and I let it get in the way of our friendship.”

“Sounds like you might want to be more than friends.”

She laughed, and it wasn’t her typical carefree one. “There’s no chance of that happening. And I’m tired of obsessing about it, so maybe something like tonight is a good opportunity for me to let go of childish fantasies.”

Fuck.

I didn’t want to take theconceited route and think she was talking about me. But I knew she was. And the last thing I wanted her to do was let me go.

Hazel

My cheeks felt hotfrom how hard I was blushing, knowing that my flirtatious banter with bachelor number seven was not how I typically reacted to men. There was something about his voice that helped ease my nerves, and he seemed genuinely interested in getting to talk to me instead of turning this whole thing into something about himself.

Not that it was all about me either, but the conversation seemed to flow, unlike some of my previous unsuccessful blind dates. I’d already gone through two dude bros, one humble bragger, two obnoxious laughers and a one-word answerer so far.

By the time I got to number seven, my hopes weren’t very high that I’d be giving my number to anyone tonight, no matter how much I knew Charley wanted me to.

“You know, sometimes fantasies can be made a reality.” I tried not to read things into his statement, but my nipples didn’t get the memo, tightening as I thought about what fantasies I’d like bachelor number seven to bring to life. Ones that’d increased in frequency over the last several weeks, brought on by Reid’s insistence not to let me hide from him any longer.

While he’d always been Hudson’s friend, we’d once been close, too. But he’d never seen me. The real me. He’d seen the shy, reserved, completely inexperienced little sister of his friend I’d been in my teens. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to be that person to him any longer.

“Well, play your cards right and in a few weeks, you might be able to put your money where your mouth is…”

“Trust me, my mouth is not where it wants to be right now,” he practically growled, and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that this man would get my phone number at the end of the night.

---