Page 45 of Verses

Or maybe that was just my imagination. I wanted to write a song about what I could conjure up about the man.

“What drink would you say is the best one you have?”

I loved the way Wolf raised his eyebrows, but he didn’t say a word.

“Do you like margaritas? I have them in strawberry and peach.”

Turning up my nose, I said, “I’m not a tequila fan.”

“Why don’t you make her an Old Fashioned sweet?”

Laughing, I said, “I don’t even know what that is!”

“Trust me, Hayley,” Wolf said. “I know you’ll like it.” The way his tongue caressed my name gave me the shivers.

And Ididtrust the man. Maybe more than I should have.

“Okay. Sal, give me an Old Fashioned sweet.”

“And make mine a regular Old Fashioned,” Wolf said.

“You got it.”

While Sal got busy, I slid up on the stool, some kind of electricity buzzing through my body. And then it hit me.

I. Was.Single.

And that thought led me back to wanting to find out for sure if Wolf had an ulterior motive showing up here. For all I knew, he just wanted to hear me singing a wide range of songs.

I suspected he was here for other reasons, though, and I thought there might be an easy way to figure it out.

But I couldn’t look him in the eye. Instead, I watched Sal mixing our drinks. “Did you know I broke up with Kyle?”

Wolf cleared his throat but I resisted the urge to look at him. “I’m surprised it took this long.”

Although I kept my focus on Sal, I did turn my face toward Wolf—and I couldn’t help making eye contact when I finally spoke. “Why do you say that?”

Was he interested in the fact that I was single—or was it simply a general observation, a comment a friend might make?

I couldn’t read him. Not a bit. “It was pretty obvious you guys were miserable together.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” It made me think of my mom and her myriad boyfriends before she married Phil. He was by far her longest-lasting, most stable relationship. And even though they fought on occasion, those altercations weren’t like the knock-down drag-out bullshit melees my mother used to engage in with previous partners.

Their arguments seemed almost normal.

Reflecting on those past relationships of hers, though, and comparing them to my most recent, I wondered if I wasn’t so different from my mom.

It was, perhaps, a reminder that I deserved someone like Kyle far more than a guy who was caring and sweet like Wolf. Although Kyle and I had reconciled as friends and I would always care for him, something deep inside me told me I deserved nothing better than the way he’d treated me.

It was all I should expect.

And yet there was so much about Wolf that I was drawn to…that I couldn’t resist.

“It begs the question,” Wolf said as Sal brought our drinks to us. “Do you have a place to stay?”

Why was he asking that?

Saliva pooled in my mouth, and not in anticipation of the drink Sal slid in front of me. Still, I gazed upon it as if I were dying of thirst. Wolf handed Sal a card and I placed my hand on the glass. “I moved into Liam’s old room.”

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