Page 92 of Fall Into Me

“This is going to be amazing.” Ash grinned, watching Cali wobble toward the group of writhing bodies.

“Is this…are they playing Bad Omens?”

“Mmm,” Ash hummed around his mouth full of beer. “Mags said it was ‘Youths’ Music Night’. I told her she needed a new name, and she looked at me like I had a set of balls resting on my forehead.”

The beer that had been in my mouth pretty much sprayed out my nose, and I started coughing. Ash just kept talking while simultaneously patting me on the back, which turned out to be not helpful at all.

“I also told her she needed a new DJ. Whoever it is played that new single from Lady Luck,which I approved of, but followed it up with some song about hills sung by what I’m pretty sure was a quartet.”

I was still coughing, and Ash just shoved his mostly empty beer back at me to help, and that was when she saw me. I half expected a bloodcurdling scream to rip out of her. Instead, her head tipped to the side a little, and slowly she lifted her middle finger up at me.

I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I settled back into the booth and tilted my head back, lifting my middle finger to her in return.

“Is this some weird foreplay thing you guys have started doing?” Ashton’s warm breath was right at my ear, and I felt no remorse when my palm made firm, if not unintentional, contact to his face.

“Fuckingow!”

“Your moist breath in my ear is so fucking unwelcome, I can’t even tell you.” I flipped him off too before I looked back to Cali. Ashton was busy mumbling about how I should be so lucky when I noticed the guy he’d pointed out before.

I hadn’t even seen him move, but he had. He was standing further along the wall with his eyes laser-focused on the girl Cali was with.

It was almost painful having to sit here. To watch Cali without any inhibitions, walls completely down, even if it was because of way too much liquor in her system, judging by the amount of shot glasses on the table they’d been sitting at.

I hated that she was right there, just within my reach, and yet I had no right to touch her.

“You’re doing your whole sad boy smolder thing.”

“My what?” I snapped.

“Your sad boy smolder.” Ash leaned around so that he was putting his face in my line of sight. I pushed it away, covering said face with my entire hand.

“I don’t smolder.”

He barked a laugh. “Yes, you do. In a very sad boy way.”

“Shut up.” I tried to put my hand back on his face, which he evaded with the sort of skill that definitely reinforced that getting him in a headlock had been because he’d let me.

“Just go up there.”

“No. She needs this. A night off with a friend.”

I couldn’t stop seeing the way she’d looked before she left. I knew that she was making a point. Making me regret my words when I told her in no uncertain terms that I didn’t want any of these fucking walls between us.

I had dreamed, every damn day, about what it would be like to finally be close enough to her where I could count the freckles on her cheeks. See the way her pulse flickered in her throat, hear the way she breathed. Calm and steady while she lay with her head on my chest.

I savored every second that my eyes traced over her, watching the way she tipped her head back and threw her hands up above her head. Still in her sundress from earlier, she looked fucking beautiful.

“Is sheflossing?”Ashton sounded like he was about to wet himself, and I delivered a solid punch to his shoulder. Cali had never been able to dance, but it didn’t make me want to look away from her any less, even as she transitioned to that move where she was cleaning each ear with an imaginary Q-tip before throwing it away.

I turned to Ash then. “I’m going to get her back.”

“I know,” he said, eyes meeting mine. He’d always been so sure of me, even when I hadn’t been sure of myself.

Ash rolled his head back toward the dance floor, mouth opening like he was about to ask me to move so he could go grab another beer when I felt his body still, and he breathed a curse. By the time I looked back to the dance floor, it was too late.

I’d had my eyes off her for one fucking second. That was all. Just one.

Dark and Handsome, as Ash dubbed him, had already made his way onto the dance floor. An arm wrapped around the waist of Cali’s friend, mouth at her ear, while her eyes struggled to focus on literally anything.

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