Because what the hell would that accomplish?
I lifted the receiver from the wall and pressed it to my ear. “A Drop of Hope. How can I help you?”
“Go out with me.” His gravelly voice echoed through the line.
A surprised sound whispered from my lips, and Kale was suddenly at the window, his face pressed to the glass, hand shading his eyes so he could see inside. His other hand was holding his cell to his ear. “Go out with me, Hope. Just dinner. Because I can’t fucking stop thinking about you. Couldn’t after I saw you the first time at Olive’s on Friday night. It only got worse after I saw you here Monday morning. I don’t know what it is about you . . . but there’s something that makes me want to figure it out.”
My breaths were hard pants, my heart a jackhammer in my chest. “My life’s complicated, Kale.”
“And I’m offering you a night away from it. Don’t you at least deserve that?”
I wanted to beg him, what then? What happened if I fell for that smirk and that smile and those tender eyes?
Fast and hard?
I could already feel myself slipping. My heart tipping his direction.
What happened if Dane found out?
What then?
But I was so tired of that man controlling every aspect of my life, even after I’d made the decision to cut him from it.
Jenna was suddenly in my face, gripping my wrist, her voice a hard, demanding whisper. “You tell him yes, Harley Hope. Don’t you dare hang up that phone without telling him yes. You deserve something just for you. Just for you.”
Indecision swarmed, questions and worries and want.
But it was the feeling balled in my stomach that trembled the floor beneath my feet.
The urge to reach out and touch on the beauty and tenderness that swam in his eyes. To discover if it was real.
The throb of desire that begged, a whisper in my ear that goaded—just one touch.
The hidden need to feel those hands skating my flesh.
I guessed I’d thought I’d never crave that again, my life fulfilled, my spirit content in knowing I was living for what was right.
Jenna squeezed tighter, my bossy best friend mouthing the word as she angled her head with the demand. “Say yes.”
It was at the same second Kale fisted his hand against the window, his forehead rocking against it, his own words a petition. “Come on, Hope. Say yes. I promise you, you won’t regret it.”
A hint of playfulness came out on the last, but it didn’t matter, because I was agreeing.
“Yes,” I murmured, wanting to feel something good even though I wasn’t so much a fool that I didn’t know I was making a mistake. That in the end, it wouldn’t hurt.
Because it already felt as if this mattered.
As if he mattered.
“Okay. One night. Just dinner,” I reiterated.
He breathed out in what sounded like relief. “Just dinner.”
8
Kale
I fumbled for my phone when it dinged in my pocket. “Shit,” I muttered when the damn thing nearly slipped from my hand.
Didn’t help that I was all kinds of overeager and terrified like some kind of pathetic fucker begging for a bone.
That was what I’d become.
Pathetic.
Because my stomach was tied up in knots, anxiety lining my insides, nerves rattling through me like an earthquake that hit from out of nowhere in the middle of the night.
The last two days had been spent wondering what in the hell it was I thought I was doing.
What I thought I expected to pull off here.
I was so far out of bounds that I had not a single clue where I stood.
Standing around, waiting on a girl.
Wanting her.
Both her sweet little body and her sweet little mind, wondering what it was that made her reserved and shut off and shy.
What ignited that fire that so clearly burned underneath.
What brought the flush riding to her cheeks.
Why those places that had gone dormant inside me found it fit to light up when we got in the same room.
It fucking terrified me that they did. That I felt something I was sure had died with her. Something that had been obliterated into nonexistence that suddenly had a flicker of a heartbeat again.
Was it worth it?
I sucked in a breath. I didn’t fucking know. But there I stood anyway, waiting, praying that she showed.
The guys were going to have a field day if they found out where I was tonight.
On a motherfucking date.
It wasn’t even as a consequence of Nikki drinking my ass under the table.
No bets or wagers other than the one I’d lobbied against myself.
I mean, I’d made it all the way out the door of A Drop of Hope without letting the words that had been begging on my tongue free.
All the way out the damned door.
All I’d had to do was get in my car, drive away, and never look back.