I shook my head, confused and wary.
“Last night—what happened in the alley.” He shook his head. “It was a mistake,” he said, and with that single word, I understood everything. Whatever he’d seen in me—whatever he’d wanted—I’d managed to destroy it. He might have lost control last night, but in the end, I was dragonbait—some weak female who needed rescuing. But it wasn’t a princess that Evan Black wanted. It never had been.
“A mistake,” I repeated dully. I thought of the way I’d felt in his arms. The way he’d kept the nightmares at bay.
Yeah, maybe that was a mistake. Because he’d given me peace—and I damn sure didn’t deserve it.
“You’re a fucking idiot. You know that, right?”
I gaped at Flynn over the coffee I was sipping to nurse my raging headache. “What the hell?”
I’d called Kat first for cupcakes and sympathy, but she’d had to go into the coffee shop to cover someone else’s shift. I’d ended up at Flynn’s, figuring that if anyone could cheer me up it would be him. So far, I was less than impressed with his technique. “When you said I should come over, I thought it was so you could make me feel better.”
“That was before I knew the full story. And that you plan to just let the guy walk. Like I said. Fucking. Idiot.”
“Let him walk? He practically sprinted.” I ran my fingers through my hair. “He doesn’t want me. And I sure as hell shouldn’t want him.”
He added some Tabasco to the Bloody Mary he was mixing, then slid it onto the counter in front of me.
I raised my steaming coffee mug. “Headache.”
“Trust me. This’ll knock it out a hell of a lot better than coffee.”
I rolled my eyes. Flynn held a firm belief in the healing powers of vodka. But despite my doubts, I sipped the drink—and had to acknowledge that it was pretty damn good.
I was sitting at the breakfast bar that was attached to the kitchen island. For the eight months we’d lived together, that had been my usual weekend perch. I’m not exactly competent in the kitchen, but Flynn can make anything taste good. At that moment, he was scrambling eggs, making hash browns, and frying up sausage patties, and the kitchen smelled like heaven.
He moved between the island and the stove with casual efficiency dressed in gray sweatpants and a John Barleycorn saloon T-shirt. He was damn good-looking, with deep-set eyes and a swoop of hair that fell over his brow, though he constantly pushed it out of the way. His obsession with jogging and biking kept him in shape, giving him a tight ass and the kind of biceps that made even the tallest woman feel petite. He could cook—which in my book was a plus—and I happened to know that he was a lot of fun in bed.
He flipped two sausage patties, then turned to me, his eyes narrowed. “What?”
I held up my hands in a gesture of innocence.
“You have that look. What’s on your mind?”
“I don’t have a look,” I countered.
“I’ve known you forever. Trust me when I say you have a look.”
“There is no look. But if there was a look it would be one of confusion.”
“And you’re confused because …?”
“I’m just wondering how you’re justified in giving relationship advice. I’m pretty sure you’ve gone out on a first date with every woman in Chicago, but somehow that whole second date thing eludes you.”
“I’m highly selective,” he said. He pulled himself up to sit on the granite counter. “This isn’t an exercise in dramatic irony, is it? You’re not going to blurt out that even though you’ve been pining after Evan all these years, now you realize it was really me you wanted all along?”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” I said. “And I think your potatoes are burning.”