I shut those questions down real quick. I didn’t want Kassa with someone like me, either. And I was never going to be with Kassa, so it didn’t matter if Jace would have actually approved or not.
I stopped at the door to the stairwell to face the three other guys. “You coming or not?” I asked Jace.
He shook his head. “Not. Kin would kick me in the balls if I messed up Kassa’s date. And who knows how Kas would react if I screwed that up for her. Look, she’s eighteen years old. She’s allowed to date, for fuck’s sake.”
“What about you two?” I ignored him and asked the two guys who had been my closest friends since before my father had killed my mom.
“We got your back,” Sin answered as I had expected him to.
“Me too,” Kale agreed. “But I’m not killing anyone for you tonight, man. I gotta be at work early tomorrow.”
Kassa
Nate picked me up from Kin and Angie’s apartment at exactly seven o’clock. I had texted him earlier in the day to ask him to pick me up there rather than my own apartment because I’d had a feeling that, once Gray found out I was going out on a date, he would get all overprotective caveman about it, and I wasn’t sure how I would handle him if he tried to stop me from going out.
Because we were so close, I knew how he would think, and once Nate arrived, I turned my phone off. I would probably catch hell for it later, but Gray was smart, and he would have found a way to track my phone so he could follow me. For the night, I didn’t want to think about him. I deserved to be able to go out and enjoy myself with a guy who liked me and see where things could go with us. Gray had made it abundantly clear that I wasn’t ever going to have that kind of relationship with him, so what was wrong with me going on a date with someone who did?
There’s not, that bitchy little voice chimed in as Nate opened the door to the restaurant he had told me about on the drive over. So stop feeling like you’re cheating on him.
So far, Nate had been a complete gentleman. Opening doors for me, flirting just enough to make me blush but not make me feel uneasy, and not once had he called me “baby” or some other random name most guys called the chick they were with because they couldn’t remember her actual name. I had unconsciously been comparing him to Gray though, just like I did with every other guy in the world. But, for once, the guy I was with wasn’t coming up short.
Nate was kind of perfect so far. Any girl would have been lucky to get to spend time with him like this. I liked him—really, really liked him. But, as the night went by and we laughed together over dinner and then dessert while we exchanged embarrassing childhood stories, I realized that the reason I was so comfortable with Nate was because there was no sexual tension between us.
He seemed to realize that too, because when he bent to kiss me outside my apartment door, it was just a soft brush of his lips over my cheek. “I had fun tonight. We should do this again.”
I smiled up at him. “Yeah, I had fun too. I would love to do it again anytime.”
“Great. Text me when you want to hang out again and we can get together.” He gave me a hug and then stepped back, grinning as he backed toward the elevators. “See you at First Bass soon?”
“Of course you will,” I laughed. “Thanks for tonight, Nate.”
“Anytime, beautiful.” With a wink, he stepped into the open elevator and waved as the doors started to shut on him.
I waited until the elevator started its descent before unlocking the door and stepping inside.
No sooner had the door shut behind me than a firm hand grasped my wrist and pulled me around to face one majorly pissed-off rocker.
“You turned your fucking phone off?” he roared. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that could have been? What the fuck would you have done if that douchebag had turned out to be just like that Brandon motherfucker?”
With my heart racing from the small fright Gray had given me, I easily tugged my wrist free of his hold and moved around him. “Nate is nothing like Brandon. He’s a nice guy, a gentleman,” I tossed over my shoulder.
“Yeah, he sure kissed you like a gentleman,” he half growled in a snide voice that annoyed the hell out of me. “A peck on the cheek? How sweet—and boring.”
I shot him a glare as I walked into the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. “That’s how a friend is supposed to kiss you, jackass.”
“And that’s all you and Nate are?” he asked, disbelief coating his tone. He crossed his arms over his massive chest and looked down at me like I was slow.
The urge to punch him in the throat was strong, but somehow, I held it in check. Barely.
“Right,” he said. “When are you going to see him again?”
I shrugged as I moved around him to go to my room, not wanting to spend more time with him in this mood than I had to. “I don’t know. Whenever.”
“I spent two hours looking for you with Sin and Kale,” he confessed as he followed me. “We checked every romantic restaurant in the city, and then some not-so-romantic ones.”
“Kin knew where I was.”
“She wouldn’t fucking tell me,” he bit out, stopping my bedroom door from slamming in his face with his foot. Pushing the door open, he came into my room without being asked and flopped down on his side in the middle of my bed. “She kept saying it wasn’t any of my business.”