He gave a slight nod. “I accept your apology.”
I swirled my glass without taking a drink, just needing to do something with my hands, to divert my eyes elsewhere. “Honestly, I thought someone like you would like being with a woman who only wants sex, no talking, no connecting.”
“Someone like me?” He rubbed his fingers across his chin, feeling the coarseness of his stubble. “That’s quite an assumption since you don’t know anything about me.” He shifted his glass then brought it to his lips, staring me down.
“Come on.” I raised my hand and gestured to him. “You’re gorgeous. Gorgeous men don’t look to settle down.”
“Gorgeous women want to settle down, but that’s not you at all.”
“Fine. Am I wrong?”
He considered the answer for a long time before he answered. “No.”
I rolled my eyes. “So, my assumption was right.”
“And the point I made was right.”
“Touché.”
“I understand you’re just looking for a fling. That’s fine with me. But I would like your friendship. If this is a friends-with-benefits relationship, we need to be friends first.”
“Why do you want to be my friend?”
He picked up his glass. “Because I like you.”
“Really? Because you just told me I was rude.”
“You were rude. But everything else about you, I do like.”
This was the closest I’d ever let a man come to me. The others respected my boundaries, didn’t care about my rudeness. They were just happy to get laid. The others who wanted something more were cut loose right away. But not a single one of them had asked for my friendship. “Alright…we can be friends.”
He stared at me for a while, his eyes narrowed on my face like he was examining me on a deeper level.
“But to be clear, I am seeing other people. And this will never grow into something deeper.”
He smiled slightly. “This guy really messed you up, didn’t he?”
I wanted to snap back with a harsh comment, but I kept it bottled inside. “That’s not a topic I ever want to talk about.”
He nodded. “Fair enough. But just so you know, someone really fucked me up too.”
Nine
Carson
Charlie was in the kitchen when I walked inside. “Hungry?”
I set my satchel on the dining table. “When have you ever asked that and my answer was no?”
“Well, there was that one time…” He stared into the distance as he tried to recall the instance. “Nope. You’re right.” He smiled and turned back to his cooking.
I joined him in the kitchen and helped him prepare everything. Charlie usually cooked a few times a week, and we ate the leftovers for a couple days. I served it onto the plates then carried them to the dining table.
Charlie left the pots and pans in the sink to be washed later—by me. That was our policy. He cooked and I cleaned. He joined me at the table. “You seem to be in a better mood.”
“I just saw Dax.”
“Good. You called him.” He leaned over his food and ate.
“Yeah.”
“How’d that go?”
“We got a drink at the bar, and I apologized…for being a snappy bitch.”
“Wow, you apologized?” he asked in surprise. “What a sight…”
“I apologized to you a couple weeks ago,” I retorted.
“No. You just missed me so much that you stopped caring how much I pissed you off.”
“Yeah…I guess.”
“So, you’re going to keep seeing him?”
I shrugged. “I told him we would only be friends with benefits, and I would never change my mind. Then he said it was obvious I’d been hurt.”
Charlie finished his bite but didn’t take another. He just regarded me for a while.
“But he said he’s been hurt too, so…there’s that.”
He continued to watch me. “I really like this guy, Carson.”
“You don’t even know him.”
“Neither do you. But let’s get to know him. Let’s give him a chance.”
I sighed deeply. “I’m not in that place, Charlie.”
“And neither is he. So, it’s a good starting point.”
I took another deep breath, finding it impossible to ever trust again, to ever really feel anything significant for a man again. I just wanted them for necessities, like lust, affection, good sex. But they served no other purpose.
“Maybe nothing serious will ever happen with Dax. But you could use it as a jumping-off point, to get your feet in the water, to start over…”
I did like Dax. And I really liked the fact that he’d been broken too. Maybe we could be friends. Maybe we could help each other. “We’ll see what happens…”
“What happened with your boss?” Kat asked, standing beside me while holding her drink.
“He hounded me hard.” I rolled my eyes. “He wants me to turn in this article, but it’s not done yet—”
“You need to just do it,” Charlie said. “Vince doesn’t care if it’s perfect right now. He cares about being the first news outlet that exposes it. You can always write a follow-up later.” He stood beside Matt, his dirty-blond hair combed back.
Kat sipped her drink as she stared at him.
“Not to be a dick, but does anyone read the paper anyway?” Matt asked. “Isn’t some other company going to paraphrase your article and put it up on Facebook? So, no one will even know that you were the first to expose all of this?”
That made me take a long drink of my cosmo.
Charlie rolled his eyes. “We have lots of subscribers, and people in the industry respect our work. So, yes, people will know that we were the first.”
“Ooh…there’s your man.” Denise nudged me in the side before she nodded to the entryway.
Dax walked inside in jeans that were low on his hips and a t-shirt that stretched across his big pecs. He always stood straight, always carried himself like a powerful man, and his pissed-off expression made him so sexy.
Every woman in the bar stared at him.
“I always forget how hot he is…” My eyes followed him, knowing he hadn’t spotted us yet.
“Me too,” Matt said with a deep sigh.
“When are you going to set me up?” Kat asked. “If his friends look anything like him… Yum.”
Dax turned his head and noticed me with my crew, and there was a slight look of acknowledgment that entered his eyes, and then he quickly glanced down, looking me over with his hot gaze, like he liked the way my ass looked in my dress. He headed my way, his eyes only on me.
“Oh damn…” I’d forgotten how gorgeous he was. When he called me out on my shit, it made him even sexier. I didn’t like being told what to do, but when he put me in my place, it was a turn-on. That was probably why I overcame my humiliation and texted.
His arm circled my waist, his large hand feeling my curves and the top of my ass, and he moved farther in until his face was above mine, his head tilted down slightly so he could look at my lips.