Page 19 of Breaking Blaze

Anna couldn’t help but roll her eyes at her incorrigible friend. “Well, with all your stories and what I know about Blaze and his ‘dates’, it’s more like a cesspool, isn’t it?”

Barking with laughter, Sally drew a few eyes from the bar crowd. She ignored them.

Moments passed as Sally played with the condensation on her tumbler and Anna watched, her thoughts in disarray, her heart aching.

“Why do you think Blaze was here?” Sally’s question startled Anna whose chest kicked at the mention of his name.

“Honestly, he was probably here to pick up another bimbo,” Anna sneered, disgust and anger coating her tongue.

“Hmmmm,” Sally replied. “Are you sure? Because I watched him come in here, stand right there—” she pointed to the spot just next to where Anna was standing— “stare at you for like five minutes straight with this really heavy look on his face, and then hightail it after your kiss with Trevor.”

Anna stood there, stunned. “He saw me kiss Trevor?” Oh. No. Breath catching, chest tightening, Anna couldn’t stop the memory.

Beautiful sky blue eyes stared down at her, laughter and affection brightening his expression. More often lately, his looks, his touch…were different. Like he couldn’t touch her enough or memorize her face well enough.

“You ever been kissed, Anna-boo?” he asked, his deep voice strangely raspy, his big, warm hand sliding from her shoulder, up her neck, to cup her jaw. She sucked in a breath, goosebumps rising along the path of his hand. She shuddered, her nipples hardening.

“N-no,” she stuttered, unable to form any other words.

His mouth kicked sideways into a smirk and her panties nearly burst into flames.

Was he going to do it? Was he going to kiss her? Was he going to be her first kiss?

The silence between them filled with a surge of need, the need to feel his sexy lips against hers. They looked so soft…so delicious.

As she watched, her chest burning with unexpelled breaths, a strange look came over Blaze’s face, the laughter in his eyes slipping—just for a moment—before his mask of mirth slid back into place. He shook his head, clearing his throat, the heat between them moments before dissipating. Disappointment welled. “Ah, well…when you finally get around to wantin’ to kiss for the first time, Anna Cass, I want it to be me.”

God, she’d wanted that too, but then, not even a week later, he started pulling away, making excuses about being too busy to hang out with her. He still called her, still texted with her, still made the effort to be there when she needed him, but there was a new…wall between them. One she didn’t know how to climb. Then and now were in glaring parallel, only this time she was the one constructing the wall.

After their “kiss that never happened” he’d left, enlisting in the Navy.

After that, the closeness she’d experienced with him had practically disappeared. On his return, though, she’d been so disgustingly hopeful that they would go back to the way things were before he’d left. That they would go right back to that cusp just at the edge between best friends and more.

But he’d turned to other women, filling most of his nights with one sexual partner after another, sparing her time in between conquests.

Leaving her flapping in the wind like a dirty stocking on a pole.

“You gonna be okay?” Sally asked, her voice gentle even in a room of raucous sound.

Swallowing around the ball of tension, dread, and heartache in her throat, Anna answered, “It’s gonna have to be.”

Thirty minutes and one appetizer platter later, Anna bid Sally goodnight. Her friend was staying a little longer because she’d caught the attention of a rather suave, sophisticated, devastatingly handsome dark haired man at the end of the bar. If Sally did what Sally usually did when faced with a drop dead sexy man, then Anna wouldn’t hear from her friend until tomorrow night.

Like an addiction, Anna checked her phone for anything from Blaze.

Nothing since that afternoon when she’d spilled the beans about her date—not that she wouldn’t have told him eventually.

Not that he has any right to know about my dates, her inner voice snipped…without much heat.

Ugh. She was a damn mess. Cut him off but don’t cut him off completely. Avoid him but dream about him and ache for him and yearn to just hear his voice. What had happened to the badass bitch she’d wanted to be?

She’s still in love with an asshole manwhore.

Shit! Women everywhere would be horrified—nay—disgusted with her. Where was her inner strength, independent drive, her feminine fierceness?

The answer: drowning.

How could one man reduce her to this?

“…the one you love and the one who loves you, will make you stronger. That’s what love is…strength in spite of weakness…”

Anna blinked, her lips pursing. Where had she heard that before?

Shaking her head, she pushed the words aside. She wanted to go home, wash off the disappointing first date of all first dates, put on comfy clothes, and bury her head in season four of Lucifer.

Starting her car, she pulled out of the parking lot headed for home.

Through the weariness and confusion of her evening, one thought surfaced through the haze:

What happened with Blaze?

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