Page 49 of Merry Me
The stool next to me scraped across the floor, and my sister—because of course—slid in beside me, her face flushed with alcohol and a little too muchglee.
She propped her elbows on the bar and gave me a once-over.
Then she glanced over her shoulder. To him. Still standing near the back exit, arms crossed, jaw tight, eyes trained on me like I was some fragile bird he’d broken and didn’t know how to fix.
And then her gaze slid back to me.
Her smirk was slow. Sharp. A dagger dipped in glitter.
“Guess I won my bet,” she said casually, like I hadn’t just emotionally combusted behind a dumpster.
I scowled and threw back another shot.
The warmth spread through my veins, but it wasn’t enough to erase the truth?—
I was screwed.
CHAPTER 10
NATALIE
Pain.
That was the first thing I registered. A dull, throbbing ache that pounded behind my eyes like a sledgehammer. Every muscle in my body had apparently filed a formal complaint, and I wanted to burrow under the covers and never emerge again.
The second thing I noticed?
I wasn’t alone.
The realization slithered in slowly, creeping through the fog of my hangover. A heavy arm was wrapped around my waist like it had a right to be there, fingers resting low on my hip in a way that screamed possessive and delicious and deeply unhelpful to my sense of self-preservation. My limbs were tangled around him like I was some kind of desperate, drunk octopus. My leg was tossed over narrow hips like I’d been practicing for a gymnastics event in my sleep. My cheek? Firmly planted against smooth, naked man-chest.
Oh no.
Oh no,no,no.
I cracked one eye open.
Easton.
His name flashed in my brain like a neon warning sign. Mystomach flipped—possibly from the hangover, possibly from the sheer hotness of him lying there looking like aGQspread. Hair a mess. Eyelashes obnoxiously thick. Jaw shadowed with stubble that had definitely done things to me last night.
My brain short-circuited.
Fuck.
This was not how the morning after was supposed to go. There was supposed to be a healthy amount of regret and maybe a hasty escape wrapped in a comforter. There was definitelynotsupposed to be cuddling. And definitely notthis much touching.
His hand flexed in his sleep, gripping my hip tighter like even unconscious Easton wasn’t ready to let me go.
Memories from last night came rushing back. The alley. His mouth. My mouth. The way we’d devoured each other like we were starving, like we were trying to make up for all the lost time in one night.
And then?
The bar.
I had gone back to the bar and promptly started to drink. Possibly a hundred of those devil drinks, aka Rudolph’s Nose or whatever they’d been called. And whiskey. So much whiskey. I remembered lifting a glass like I was toasting to my own destruction.
Apparently, I’d succeeded.
