Page 78 of Let Me Say It Again

“And when all else fails, use your body,” Allie added, earning her looks from our sisters. “What? It worked for me and Brady.”

When no one responded, just looked at her, Allie rolled her eyes and gestured to her breasts. “Nipple cream? Works like a charm.” Then she held a hand up, turning her lips downward. “It won’t work for you. Brady is a boob man. Is Red a boob man?”

“He’s an everything man.”

“Oooh, I’ve never been with one of those before,” Bianca said, a hint of intrigue evident in her voice. “What’s it like?”

They got off topic way too often. Ignoring Bianca’s question because it was only going to delay things further, I went back to Allie’s original statement. “Okay, but you wanted to be with Brady,” I pointed out, nudging my chin toward her. “It’s different.” Why was no one listening to me? I didn’t know if Ireally wanted to be with Red in the way they wanted me to be with him. It felt hypocritical. Like it went against my beliefs.

Allie shook her head. “Originally, all I wanted was to have sex with Brady, not have his baby and fall in love with him. Sometimes the best things are unexpected.”

It was official, I liked Allie better when she was buzzed. I pushed a drink back to her, hoping she’d take another sip, before looking at my phone. I had to text Red something, or I’d never get these four off my ass. But what did I say? I wasn’t the coy and cutesy type. I also wasn’t the type to lead a man on. Turning over a few ideas in my head, I let my fingers run over the keys a few times.

Jade:You have a nice dick, but maybe you could be more than that to me.

Delete.

Jade:I hear sex is better on a full stomach.

Ugh. Delete.

Jade:How are you with small talk?

Delete!

This.

Sucked.

I deleted everything I typed.

Until, finally, something popped in my head that didn’t make me want to gouge my eyes out. And I knew that it was as good as it was going to get.

Jade:I don’t want to, but we should go out.

Shit. I was so not one to type and delete like I’d been doing. I said what was on my mind, take it or leave it. If men had a problem with it, then that right there told me everything I needed to know.

* * *

Reddington

I shook my head at the text. Jade really had a way with words, and no one could convince me otherwise.

Never once did I expect Jade to be poetic. She just wasn’t like that, and she hated, loathed, really, talking about anything that made her seem human. I found it attractive actually, but I also wasn’t going to let Jade get by that easily this time.

See, the way I read the text she’d sent me was that she wanted to go out, but didn’t want to come off like the person who was asking me out. No, that was too serious for her, and I knew her well enough to know that she was thinking it came across that she cared about me, more than she wanted me to think she did.

Here was the problem: I didn’t need her to say bupkis because I could tell just by the way she acted when she was around me that she cared about me.

Was she deeply guarded? Yes.

A pain in the ass most days? Yes.

The woman I couldn’t stop thinking about? Abso-fucking-lutely.

And it was because of those things that I wasn’t going to make this easy on her. I typed back a response, and when I was happy with it, I hit send.

Reddington:I fully support you wanting to suck up the air outside, so count me in.

---