“He is so sweet on you,” Nicola adds, her eyes all warm and gooey.
“So sweet on me?” I repeat. “First of all, we’re not in the fucking south, okay? Second of all, that man is not sweet on anything. Except maybe dogs.”
Well, and he was pretty sweet with my mother the other night.
Steph violently shakes her head. “No, no, no. Then you don’t see what we see. He wants you, Kayla.”
I roll my eyes. “Well, that’s a given at this point.”
“No,” she says, louder now, and Linden has to shush her. Good lord, they’re all getting drunker by the minute. “No, let me say this,” she says, pushing her hand against Linden’s face and smushing it. “Let me say this, okay? Let me say this.”
I stare at her and gesture with open palms. “Okay, drunky. Say it.”
She leans forward, eyes wide with urgency. “He wants you. Like…he’s in love with you.”
That proclamation emits a simultaneous groan from both Linden and Bram.
“Don’t get carried away,” Bram chides.
“You women think that any man who gets his dick in you is in love with you,” Linden says to her.
“Hey,” I say sharply, jabbing my finger at him. “Please don’t lump me into the ‘you women’ category. And I happen to know for a fact that none of us here think that, especially your little wife who was in love with you loooong before you got your stupid dick in her.”
Steph glares at Linden, and I continue. “And for fuck’s sake, we barely know each other. We’re fucking, so let us fuck and shut the hell up about it.” I look at Steph. “And please, the last thing I need is for anyone to get crazy, unrealistic notions inside my head. No one loves anyone. I don’t know Lachlan and he doesn’t know me, and we’re both fine with that. We have to be fine with that because he’s leaving in forty-eight hours for a land far, far away. So please, just let us have our time with each other until then. We don’t need any complications. We don’t need love, or even feelings, because what we do have is hot as hell and fleeting, and I’m going to suck up as much good fucking sex as I can with him. Got it?”
Bram, Nicola, Steph, and Linden are staring at me wide-eyed.
“Jeez,” Linden finally says, “I was just joking. Touchy, touchy.”
“Well I’m not joking,” I tell him, getting out of my seat. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go find him. When we come back, I hope to god none of you utter the L-word or any other word except for ‘goodbye,’ okay?”
I turn on my heel and march past the wine bar, half the patrons looking at me as I go, since my outburst was probably a little too loud. Still, that made me angry as hell. Why did people always have to try and complicate shit? Why couldn’t people just fuck and that be the end of it? I mean, my friends never even knew the names of any of the men I slept with after Kyle. Why does it have to be so freaking difficult with Lachlan?
Because you do have feelings for him, my inner voice whispers to me. Because you are falling for him.
“Argh,” I growl to myself, hands on my ears, turning around in circles in the cave’s foyer. “I don’t want Steph to be right.”
“Kayla?” I hear Lachlan’s voice.
I stop spinning and look up to see him on the other side of the heavy door, in the dim cave I looked into earlier, staring at me with his usual concern.
“Yeah,” I say, feigning normalness. “Hi.”
He frowns deeper then gestures with his head to come inside.
I step in through the doors and he carefully closes them behind me. I look around. The cold stone walls are curved with buttresses, making the room take the shape of half a wine barrel. I take a few steps forward and peer down the rest of the empty hall. It looks like the kind of place where you’d have a Game of Thrones wedding, complete with alcoves and elaborate candelabras.