Lauren Blakely - After This Night

She pushed back from the table. “Excuse me,” she said, and she tapped his shoulder and cleared her throat. “I need to step outside for a second, and get some fresh air.”

“I’ll join you,” he said, rising and resting his hand on her lower back as she walked to the door, pushed hard on it, and then felt the rush of warm night air on her face. It was close to midnight, and the city was still lively, cars and cabs and people racing by.

“What happened in college between you and Michele?” She crossed her arms.

“What?” he said, blinking his eyes.

“Were you involved with her?”

“No.”

“Did anything happen with her?” she asked once more, and this time she felt like the lawyer, turning over the question again and again until the witness answered.

“What do you mean?”

“Do I need to spell it out?”

“Yeah. You do,” he said firmly.

She pretended to mime sign language as she spoke. “Were you involved with her? Because I’m getting a serious vibe from her that she’s tripping down memory lane from the days of old,” she said, now holding her hands out wide. “College this. College that. Clay in college. It’s like she’s holding on to something in college with you.”

“We kissed once. We weren’t involved.”

He said it so matter-of-factly, but it slammed into her, and she nearly stumbled backwards. He reached for her, but she held him off. She was fine. She didn’t need him.

“Ohhhhh,” she said, long and exaggerated. “Right. Of course. A kiss. That’s not involved what-so-fucking-ever.”

“What the hell, Julia? I was never involved with her. She’s a friend. Not an ex-girlfriend.”

“You kissed her,” she said, jutting her chin out at him. “That makes her kind of an ex, wouldn’t you say?”

“I don’t think that constitutes an ex.” The low-key way he answered her pissed her off, because he truly seemed to believe his own line of bullshit.

“Okay, let’s get technical and legal about it then, if you’re going to be like that. So I’ll walk you through what constitutes being involved. When you’ve kissed someone, and I ask ‘Were you involved with her?’ that’s the moment when you say ‘Yes, I kissed her once, Julia, and it meant nothing to me, and we’ve been great friends ever since then, and I have drinks with her every Thursday night and talk about you, but don’t worry that I had my tongue down her throat because we’re just friends.’ It’s not at the fucking poker game I’m losing that you tell me,” she said, practically spitting out the words through her anger.

“Are you pissed because you’re losing, or are you pissed that I kissed her?” he asked her through narrowed eyes.

Anger flared deep inside her. Anger over that woman. Over Charlie. Over the three thousand miles between her and Clay. Anger, annoyance and frustration all fused into a cocktail of heat and rage as she grabbed his shirt collar. “Thanks for pointing that out, because it’s kind of both. I have a shitstorm of trouble waiting for me back home if I don’t win,” she said.

“That’s not true. I told you I’d help you,” he said, and his hand moved briefly towards his pocket, but then he stopped.

“Why do you keep reaching for your phone? That’s not your style.”

“Flynn is out with the Pinkertons. Just wanted to make sure it’s all going well,” he said, then shifted quickly back to the matter at hand. “But I wish you’d stop worrying about the game. You’re going to be fine.”

“I don’t want you to help me, though. I want to win on my own,” she said, and she was damn near close to digging her heels into the sidewalk. Didn’t he get it? Didn’t he understand how important this was to her? But everything had collided right now. The game; Michele; the possibility of truth and lies.

“And you will.”

She pushed her hands through her hair. “I just wish you’d told me when I asked you in San Francisco if you’d been involved with her. I asked you if Michele was your ex and you said she was just a friend, and always had been. But now it turns out you kissed her,” Julia said, but she knew deep down it wasn’t the kiss that bothered her. That wasn’t why she was upset about Michele.

“It just wasn’t important, but it’s not as if you’ve been totally honest with me.”

“I didn’t lie, though. I told you there were things I couldn’t tell you.”

“I feel like we’re parsing words here. I don’t understand why it matters that I kissed her. Hope this doesn’t come as a shock to you, but I’ve kissed other women before.”

“I know,” she hissed.

“So why does it matter so much that I kissed Michele once? I don’t even think about her like that.”

“Because. Because she is here, all the time. Because she sees you. Because I don’t get to.”

“We can change that,” he said, his voice suddenly soft, all the harshness banished from his tone.

“How? I live far away and she lives a block away,” she said, dropping her face in her hands, hating the sound of her own voice. “Ugh. Look what you’ve done to me. I’ve become this whiny woman pining away, and she’s lovely and smart and funny, and it pisses me off that she can see you any time she wants.”

He gently peeled her hands away from her face, tucking his finger under her chin and lifting her gaze to his. “I don’t feel a thing for her. I didn’t tell you when you asked if she was an ex because I don’t even think about her like that. I don’t think of her as an ex. It was one kiss, one time, one drunken night. Nothing more. I don’t think about her because you’re all I think about. To the point that I’m sure no man has ever felt this way for a woman. You shouldn’t be jealous of her. She should be jealous of you.”

She stared at him, narrowing her eyes. “Seriously, Clay? Cocky much?”

“It has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with how I feel for you,” he said, moving his hands down to her arms, holding her tight. “Every woman should be jealous of you because of how I feel for you. Because no man has ever wanted a woman like I want you. No man has ever craved a woman as deeply as I crave you. And no man has ever fallen this hard and this fast for a woman.”

Her heart stopped, then thundered furiously against her chest, wanting to leap into his hands. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, all her anger draining away. “I’m a jealous witch. It’s just hard for me to see her and know you’re so friendly, and that she’s so in love with you.”

He froze like a statue. Then seconds later, though it felt like a minute, he looked at her as if she’d just spoken Russian. “What are you talking about?”

“You don’t know that?” she asked, shocked.

“No.”

“It’s patently obvious to anyone who spends ten minutes with her. She’s madly in love with you, Clay.”

He swallowed, and shook his head, as if he were shaking the strange notion away. “How can you tell?” he asked, the words coming out all choppy.

“Because of how she looks at you,” she said, as if it were obvious, because to her it was.

“And that’s enough for you to conclude she’s in love with me?” For the first time ever she’d truly surprised him. She hadn’t intended to drop a bomb, but he so clearly didn’t see it at all.

“Yes.”

“Why? How? How can you tell she looks at me like she’s in love with me?”

She rolled her eyes. “Because I recognize the look.”

The look on his face was no longer shock. It was hope, and the dawn of something so much more. “You do?”

Then she realized she’d practically said it. “Yes.”

“How?”

“Because it’s how I look at you,” she said, the words falling from her lips in a tumble. Time slowed, and the moment became heady, rich with possibility. The air between them was charged, electric, like a storm. They were magnets, needing their opposite.

He reached for her, cupping her cheeks, brushing his thumb over her jaw then her bottom lip, watching her shiver. She looked up at him, and his eyes were fixed on her. Waiting for her. His lips parted, and she was wound tight with anticipation of what he’d say. “I love the way you look at me.”

Tingles ran down her spine, spreading to her arms, her fingers, all the way to her toes. “You do?

“I do. I love the way you touch me,” he said, taking her hand, and spreading her palm open on his chest. “I love the way you talk to me. I love everything about you. And I recognize the look in your eyes, too. Do you know why?”

She shook her head, and her entire body was trembling with want, with hope. “Why?”

“Because it’s the same as in mine. Because I love you, Julia. I am completely in love with you, and I love you, and I want you to love me,” he said, never breaking his gaze from hers, his beautiful brown eyes flooded with love.

“I do. I do. I do,” she said quickly, the tension in her chest disappearing, and relief washing over her in waves. “Clay, I love you so much.”

He ran his hands through her hair, burying his fingers deep. She felt him trembling. He returned a hand to her face, brushed the backs of his fingers against her cheek, and she leaned into him, savoring the gentleness of his touch. Feeling the reverence that he treated her with, like she was precious to him. He ran his hand down her neck to her throat. “Julia,” he said, his voice low but so intense as he spoke. “I have never fallen in love like this.”

His words bathed her in some kind of bliss, as if her veins flowed with liquid gold. “How have you fallen?” she asked, overwhelmed with all she felt for him, with the way her body seemed to reach for him, to need him.

“With everything I have. There is no part of me that isn’t in love with you. There is no part of me that holds back,” he said, his voice steady, certain.

Allness. That’s what it was for her, too. An utter allness. A love so deep and consuming it filled her organs, it rode roughshod over her skin. It was a mark on the timeline of her life. Before. After. She raised her hand, and touched his face, stroking his jawline, watching with wonder as she made him gasp after a simple touch. He grasped her hand, linked his fingers through hers, and brought her palm to his mouth, kissing her there. “I love you.” He bent his head to her neck, brushing his lips ever so softly against her skin, then up to her ear. “I am so in love with you,” he said, as if he couldn’t stop telling her. “I love you so much.”

“I am so in love with you.” She stretched her neck so he could kiss her freely as he wanted to as she ran her hand through his hair. “So in love.”

He stopped kissing her, pulling back to look her in the eyes once more. His gaze melted her from the inside out. “I can’t wait to take you home with me tonight. To spread you out on the bed. To make love to you all night long.”

“I want that. I want that again and again. And over and over.”

“Now go back in there,” he said, gesturing to the restaurant. “Even though you look like you’ve just had sex.”

Her cheeks felt rosy. She was sure there was a glow in her eyes. “I feel like I’ve just had sex. Sex with the man I love,” she said, playing with his hair, not wanting to let go of him, but needing to.

“You will have that. I will give you everything, Julia.”

* * *

He’d join her shortly. He would. He just needed to take care of this matter. The text on his phone was loud and clear. Business came first right now, and later, he’d find a way to explain.

Julia skipped down the sidewalk at two in the morning. Every move she made brought a smile to his face, and touched down with happiness in his heart.

She’d done it. She’d won big. After precariously losing to Michele for a while there, she’d made a few big bets on a few big hands, and had pulled out ahead. She’d wrapped her arms around the chips, and tugged them in tight. She sure looked like she wanted to kiss them, to bring each and every one to her lips, and then shake them at the sky victoriously. Instead, she’d stacked them, handed them to Liam since he’d acted as the bank, and watched with wide eyes as those chips turned into cash.

She threw her head back, twirling on the street, as if she were a kid catching snowflakes on her tongue.

“And here’s your money, sir,” she sang, pretending to hand it over to Charlie. “Now, go fuck off forever.”

She was jubilant, ready to lead a victory march. Clay grabbed her arm and pulled her in for a kiss, bending her back and kissing her like they were on a postcard. Let the whole damn city be jealous. Let the world want what he had. He claimed her mouth with his own, kissing her hard and passionately, like he planned to always. He’d never tire of the way her lips tasted, of her sweetness, of how she responded to him. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and held on tight.