“I’m sure. Brad’s into me, right?”
Grace’s face wrinkled like she’d eaten something bad. “Yeah, he’s into you.”
“Good. So, I’ll sleep with him tonight.”
“He’s kind of a douchebag, Addie.”
“He’s totally a douchebag.” Addison smoothed down her dress and tugged at the pearls around her neck. “Which makes him perfect for rebound sex. I absolutely, positively will not want to date him, even if he’s amazing in bed.”
“He does have a great body,” Grace said.
“He’s a firefighter, of course he has a great body. Probably good stamina too. That’s important, right?”
She hated how dumb she sounded. She’d been with her lying, cheating dick of a fiancé for years, and she was remarkably naïve about sex. She’d known that she and Harrison hadn’t had the most… provocative sex life, but she’d really had no idea just how bad she was in bed.
Her cheeks flamed bright red and the bathroom suddenly seemed too loud and too bright. A woman came out of a stall, washed her hands, and checked her makeup before leaving, all while Addison stood frozen at the counter.
“Addie?” Grace said. “Honey, you okay?”
“Fine.”
Pain danced along the front of her skull, making her feel a little sick to her stomach.
“You don’t have to -”
“Enough, Grace!” The headache was making her short-tempered and irritable. “I’m doing this. I need to know if I’m… if I’m as bad in bed as Harrison said I was. Okay? You don’t know what it’s like to hear your fiancé, the man who’s supposed to love you, tell you that he cheated because you suck in bed. You have no idea what I’m going through right now so just stop!”
“All right,” Grace said.
Grace was the one with the temper, but her voice stayed calm and she didn’t look angry. Addison reached out and took her hand, squeezing it tight. “I’m sorry. I was being a bitch.”
“No, you weren’t,” Grace said.
“I was, and I’m sorry.” Addison toyed with the pearls around her neck again. “C’mon, let’s get back to the table so I can put my rusty flirting skills to use on Brad.”
“All right.” Grace kissed her forehead. “But if you change your mind at any time, let me know and we’ll leave.”
“I won’t change my mind,” Addison said.
* * *
She was on the verge of changing her mind. It wasn’t because of Brad’s bad breath or the way he acted like he was God’s gift to women. It wasn’t even because her headache had grown exponentially worse in the last hour or so.
She wanted to change her mind because Grace was right – this wasn’t her. She wasn’t the type of girl who had random sex with a guy and then never talked to him again. She was a nice girl. She was a…
Proper lady?
She cringed at the term, could almost hear Harrison saying it in her head. Her head throbbed with fresh pain and she rubbed at her temples. Screw that. She was tired of being a proper lady. She was having sex with Brad tonight and that was that.
But first… she really needed to do something about her headache. She’d never relax and enjoy herself if her head was aching like a rotting tooth.
She squinted around the pub. Grace had gone to the bar and it looked like she was talking to the woman who ran the animal rescue. Rain or Raylene, maybe…
She touched Brad’s arm. He might be into her, but even his lust took a backseat when it was the bottom of the eighth and the score was tied. He, along with every other guy at the table, had been glued to the big screen television mounted on the wall for the last half hour.
“Brad, I have a bad headache. There’s some Advil in the glovebox of my car. Will you walk me out to get it?”
“Uh, the game is almost over. Can you give me half an hour?” Brad said without taking his eyes off the screen. “Oh, come the fuck on! You call that a fucking strike? What kind of ump is this guy?”
“A shit one,” Jesse said.
“It’ll only take a minute,” Addison said. “It’s late and it’s dark out. It’ll take a few minutes to walk to my car and back. I’m not comfortable walking in the parking lot by myself.”
“Nothing’s going to happen,” Brad said. “This is Harmony Falls. Nothing bad ever happens here.”
She waited another few seconds before standing. Brad was right. She didn’t need an escort. She was just being a silly little girl.
Addison made her way to the front door of the pub as there was a round of cheers from the people watching the game. She pushed the door open, stepped into the warm night air, and breathed deeply.
She rubbed at her temples as she leaned against the brick exterior for a moment. God, what was wrong with her? Why did she have such a need to be protected? Being a helpless female was so outdated, and she should be ashamed that she even wanted Brad to act like her hero. She needed to be her own hero. Needed to take care of herself for a change.
She’d been so used to having Harrison at her side that some days it seemed overwhelming to be on her own.
Still rubbing at her temples, she walked across the dark parking lot to her car. She opened the car and rummaged through the glovebox, breathing a sigh of relief when she found the Advil. Clutching it in one hand, she slid out of the car and locked it before walking toward the bar. She would feel better and more like herself when this horrible headache was –
“Well, hi there, pretty lady.”
She turned around and stared at the four men who were trailing behind her. She had no idea where they’d come from or who they were, and her headache surged into almost unbearable pain as a rush of adrenaline went through her.
“Whatcha’ doin’ out here all by yourself?” The biggest of the men drawled.
Fear spiking in her veins, she backed away, the bottle of Advil slipping from her fingers to land on the pavement, as the men wandered a little closer. “Just grabbing something from my car.”
Her mouth was cotton-dry, and her legs were shaking as her body went into flight or fight mode. Predictably it chose flight.
“You thinking about running, little lady? Guarantee you, we’re faster than you,” the leader said.
More adrenaline surged through her as she slipped out of her heels. No one else was around and the noise in the pub was too loud for anyone to hear her scream. Grace didn’t know where she’d gone, and Brad was completely absorbed in the baseball game and wouldn’t notice if she was gone too long. Her only chance was to run.
The men watched her in amusement as she took a few deep breaths and calculated in her head the distance to the pub. She ran track in high school. She could beat them. She just had to keep a level head and not look back.
“Looks like we got ourselves a runner, boys,” the leader said with a cold grin. “Truth be told – we like it when you run. We like the -”
She turned and fled. She could hear the men chasing after her and she had taken maybe a dozen steps when a large body stepped out of from behind a truck. She ran face-first into a wall of hard and unforgiving muscle, and she screamed piercingly as an arm wrapped around her waist and held her immobile.