Page 248 of Branded
Laughter punched through the night air, traffic buzzed in the distance, but here, behind the restaurant in the quiet alley that had dumpsters shoved on one end and a row of employee cars on the other, it was hushed.
“I come out here to think sometimes,” she murmured, surprising me, not realizing that she’d heard me following her out.
Not realizing that she’d seen me there staring and not speaking.
Being an idiot.
Christ.
“When it gets to be too much,” she said, voice still soft, turning toward me, her brown eyes rich, dark chocolate in the dim light.
God, she was pretty with those big eyes and gentle curves to her cheeks, her jaw. Her lips were plush pillows that I wanted to taste.
They’d be incredibly soft, I knew.
They had to be.
And she?—
“You know,” she whispered, insecurity creeping into her tone. “Because it’s so loud inside the bar and busy and?—”
“Will you go on a date with me?!”
It was an abrupt burst of sound, so it was no surprise that she jerked back in shock, the gentle smile that had been on her face while telling me about her need to find a bit of quiet disappearing in an instant.
I could have turned and punched the thick brick wall behind myself, pummeled it until my knuckles split.
She’d been giving me a little piece of herself.
An insight I could have held close, an opening I could have eased through.
I wasn’t an idiot—or rarely outside of my interactions with Jules, anyway.
I could have taken that insight and used it to learn more about her, to understand the shadows that sometimes lived in her eyes, to find out what made her smile and why she had a need for quiet. Was it just the buzz of activity inside? Or because she was busy with work and school and being a mom that she needed to steal slices of silence?
Instead, I’d yelled at her.
And her face said she both didn’t like the volume and what I’d asked…yelled…whatever.
“Jules,” I began, being certain to modulate my tone this time, to not startle her.
To not yell. Fuck.
“I can’t,” she said before I got further than saying her name. “Not because of you.” She reached out, squeezed my forearm, and hell if sparks didn’t fly up my skin, skitter through my heart, grow into embers in my stomach, flames licking down toward my dick.
“I—”
“I’m not ready to date anyone,” she murmured. “Again, not because of you.”
Her fingers sliding away, and I didn’t miss that they curled into a fist she pressed to her hip, her knuckles standing out in sharp relief.
Her lips pressed together, released. “I-I’m just?—”
I reached over, captured her fist. When she went stiff, I crouched a little so that our gazes connected. “Don’t worry,” I whispered, smoothing out her fingers, hating the half-moon indentations on the palms of her hands, hating that I’d been the cause of them. “I get it. I just”—I brushed my thumb over the crescent-shaped hurt—“Careful, gorgeous.”
Her inhale was sharp, and I let her hand go, stepped back to put more distance between us.
I wanted to leave, to find some privacy—some quiet—to introduce my fist to the bricks, but I didn’t want things to be weird between us, didn’t want Jules to be uncomfortable here.
