Shit, I’m trying to impress him.
Though, what was so wrong with that? I was single and therefore totally available to mingle. Sure, there was the awkward attraction to my pseudo–gay brother niggling in the back of my mind, like an annoying student raising her hand despite the teacher obviously ignoring her.
But his eyes brightened, and he stood up a bit straighter. “Marketing, huh? I’m in advertising.”
“Oh, wow,” I replied, because what else did one say to something that wasn’t at all fascinating while trying to pretend it was?
“Yeah,” he said as he swayed a bit closer to me.
I could feel Taylor burning a hole in the side of my head with her eyes, but I didn’t look back at her. This could be good. TJ had nothing to do with any of the drama in my life. He could be an uncomplicated side note in an otherwise chaotic narrative.
“Do you want to dance?” he asked me, his voice as low as it could be while still allowing me to hear him.
“Sure,” I replied, though I kind of didn’t want to join him. I felt like I should want to, but…I wasn’t sure. The connection was missing. That desire to actually get to know a person wasn’t there, but it could get there. After all, it was only a dance. And maybe spending more time with him would make me feel…something.
“Hey, TJ!” We all turned to see Wyatt motioning TJ over.
“I’ll be right back,” TJ said with a vehemence that made me think he was worried I was going to pull a Cinderella on him.
“I’ll be here,” I replied with a smile.
As soon as he walked away, Taylor rounded on me. “He’s cute. Oh, and, what the fuck are you doing?”
I felt my brow furrow in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“Why are you dancing with him?”
“Because he asked,” I responded slowly.
“What about Drew?”
“What about him?” My voice sounded too casual and dismissive, even to my own ears.
She glared at me, an effective strategy that always made me cave and fill the silence.
“There’s nothing going on between Drew and me. You know that.”
I’d spilled all the details regarding Drew, even about the almost-kiss. I had maybe skimmed over my feelings surrounding the kiss, allowing it to be written off as a drunken mistake, but did that really matter? I couldn’t act on my attraction to Drew, so acknowledging my feelings out loud wouldn’t change anything.
“Nothing physical is going on, but…” Taylor trailed off, casting a glance to where TJ was still talking to Wyatt.
“But what?”
She sighed. “You look at him. A lot. And he does the same thing.”
“Of course I look at him. I live with him. I see him every day.”
“Don’t be intentionally stupid.”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay, fine, I like looking at him. Can you blame me?”
She hesitated a moment before saying, “I like Drew.”
I reared back a little because hearing her say she liked Drew was like a smack to the face, even though I had no right to feel that way.
Her eyes widened suddenly. “No, no, not like that. I mean I like him for you.”
We stared at one another for a beat before I sighed. “What do you want me to do? Hook up with the guy who’s pretending to be my brother? Sure, we’ve gotten close, and I maybe wish that there could be something there, but there can’t.”
My voice was laced with frustration because I didn’t want to get into this. Especially not in the middle of a crowded club with the subject of the conversation lingering somewhere nearby.
Taylor opened her mouth to reply, but TJ’s return cut her off.
“Sorry about that. You ready?” he asked me, gesturing toward the dance floor.
I forced a smile. “Yeah. Will you be okay?” I asked Taylor.
Nodding, she said, “I’ll go find everyone else. Just…don’t do one thing to avoid doing another.”
The words were vague, but I got the message. I wasn’t going to heed it, but I’d heard it. Instead of replying, I followed TJ into the throng of dancers.
When we began dancing, there was a respectable distance between us, our bodies lightly grazing when our movements were in sync enough to cause contact. But as time passed, TJ began to press closer, wrapping an arm around my back to pull me toward him as he ground against me. I shifted back a bit, but his grip on me didn’t let me get far.
A red flag went up, but I dismissed it because I’d danced more provocatively in my own sorority house on a Thursday night. The talk with Taylor was clearly throwing me off my game. So I gave into the beat of the music and let my body run the show.
Until a rigid part of his body pressed into my stomach. Instead of shifting away, he ground into me harder, his lips moving to trail kisses down my neck. The red flag had become a flare gun.
If circumstances had been different, I might have basked in the attention. But as it was, this felt all kinds of wrong for a whole host of reasons—the principal one among them being Drew. The frantically waving student in my head wasn’t raising her hand anymore. She was sitting smugly at her desk, knowing it was about damn time I acknowledged the truth.
I liked Drew. And whether we could act on it or not was irrelevant because the feelings remained. Which meant I needed to extricate myself from the Hoover attached to my neck.
I managed to work both hands between us and shimmy them to his shoulders so I could apply enough pressure to push him away. But the move only caused him to wrap me up tighter, his body pressed up against mine so firmly, I doubted there was a shred of space separating us.
“I’m going to go find my friends,” I said loudly into his ear.
“Mmm, later,” he said before sucking my earlobe into his mouth.
“No, right now,” I said, using my forearms to shove him back more firmly. He went, but as I whirled around to walk away from him, I felt his hand latch on to my forearm, tugging me back toward him.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
I squirmed as I tried to free my arm from his grasp. “Let go,” I ordered.
“Or what?”
I glanced around. There were some people watching our exchange, but no one made a move to intervene. And everyone else was so caught up in their own experience, they didn’t even notice.
“TJ,” I ordered. “Let. Go.”
He smiled, but it wasn’t the charming one from before. There was a hint of the predator in this one.
“No.” He yanked me back so that my body was flush against his again.
The move startled me, so I didn’t react immediately. Just as my brain had come back online and told me to kick this asshole in the balls, he was wrenched away from me, and then Drew’s big body stepped around him in order to block him from me.
“What the fuck?” I heard TJ yell.
I moved closer to Drew’s back, wishing I could burrow into him. Even though the situation was still precarious, there was a sense of calm that washed through me with Drew close by. He’d keep me safe—there wasn’t an ounce of me that doubted it.
“Time for you to go,” Drew said, his voice harsh and steady. Usually Drew’s voice was like warm honey, but now it sounded like a block of ice: cold and unbending.