“Great. Now get out of my way,” he said with a teasing smile. “Your fucking huge body is blocking the bar.”
My face accepted the notion of a genuine smile then, and I stepped aside so he could order a rum and Coke.
“Fucking lush,” I teased as he flagged down the bartender with an arm in the air.
“Better a lush than a pussy,” he said with a nod toward my beer.
“I don’t know,” Kline interjected. “Pussies are pretty nice.”
“Right?” I agreed with a laugh, and Wes smiled at the sound.
My eyes felt downright misty at my friends’ effort to make me feel better. Goddamn, this breakup was turning me into a premenstrual woman.
And then Wes’s face turned from a smile to something else as he stared at something over my shoulder.
I told myself not to turn around, but apparently Cassie wasn’t the only one who didn’t listen to me.
Kline turned too, and I knew the moment he registered Cassie’s eyes because his gaze shot to the ground before glancing back at Wes surreptitiously.
It didn’t upset me to see her. Fuck, it was the opposite of that.
I missed her.
As I turned to set my empty beer bottle on the bar, both Kline and Wes gave me assessing looks. I nodded my assurance and then walked the short distance to where Cassie stood waiting for me.
“Thatcher.”
“Crazy,” I whispered, and her eyes closed tight and her chin dropped toward the ground.
I picked it up with the gentlest of touches from my index finger and waited for her eyes to meet mine.
“What are you doing here, honey?”
She shook her head and looked to the side, and I turned her face toward mine once more.
“Look me in the eye,” I demanded softly.
She shrugged, helpless to her own emotion as a single tear rolled down her face. Her voice was barely audible over the din, but I heard it. “I miss you.”
Florida Georgia Line’s “H.O.L.Y.” started to play over the speakers of the bar, a low, seductive beat thrumming through my chest with each chord, so I pulled her hand into mine and said the first thing that came to mind.
“Dance with me?”
She nodded, putting her arms around my shoulders right there without moving a step and beginning a sway to the music. Cassie closed her eyes, and her head swished back and forth until I held it steady with a hand on each side of her throat.
Fierce and feeling, her eyes jerked open and held mine in their grasp until I couldn’t remember anyone or anything other than her or that moment in time.
My lips sought hers of their own accord. Flesh on flesh, all of her breath left her in a rush, and a sob bucked the entirety of her upper body. I pulled her closer, sealed my lips tighter to hers, and pushed my tongue through the seam of her lips.
She met me lick for lick, lost in each other, the feel of her tongue on mine sending shock waves through every single muscle in my body.
“It’s all right, baby,” I told her there, directly against her mouth. I rubbed my thumbs at the line of her throat as I kissed her again, and the tips of her long hair tickled the skin of my exposed forearms.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized through a whisper, and I sighed. Relief took forty pounds directly off my chest. “I hate the way everything happened between us that day,” she went on. “But I don’t need anyone, you know? I’m my own woman. I can watch out for myself. I can make my own decisions.”
I had to work to stop my eyes from narrowing.
“I’ve been telling myself I was fine. God, for a week, every day, all I’ve fucking done is tell myself I’m fine.”
I closed my eyes and stepped back, setting her body apart from mine with my hands on her arms.
She still didn’t get it.
Here I was thinking we were over this, that I had completely overreacted, and she still didn’t get it.
“Thatch?”
“It’s not good enough, Cass. You have no idea how much I want it to be, but it’s not. I deserve better.”
“What?” she asked, and then, when she thought she realized what I was saying, she started to get angry.
“You deserve better?” she asked, her voice rising. “Why the hell does a woman have to need you to be worthy? I guess I’ll never fucking understand men.”
I caught her wrist as she turned away and pulled her back. I wasn’t letting it go like this.
“It’s not that, and you know it. You think about me, you think about the way I am with you, and then tell me you still think you needing me is what this is about.”
“What’s it about, then? Margo? I’m not her.”
“I don’t want you to be!” I shouted. “Margo is so fucking far out of this equation it’s not even funny. This is about you and me, and you being ready to be in a real relationship.”