“Something wrong?”
I turned to Kaylee and stared at her. I tried not to let my gaze move to her soft pink lips, but I lost the battle before it even began. My eyes jerked back up to hers. “Nothing is wrong.”
She took a drink of her beer. “Listen, I was sort of hoping we might be able to talk.”
I looked out over the dance floor and caught the eye of the brunette. She was still eye fucking the hell out of me, not giving one single fuck that Kaylee was sitting next to me. I smiled, then looked back at the empty shot glass and pushed it away.
“Betty Jane, can I get another one, please.”
Kaylee looked at the shot glass and then back to me. I’d yet to acknowledge her comment about wanting to talk. Another asshole move on my part. Her eyes filled with a look like she was unsure about something, and I sighed. “What do you want to talk about, Kaylee?”
She swallowed hard—and again, I could see it in her eyes. She was definitely unsure about something. Hell, she even seemed a little nervous.
“Well, I was . . . I mean . . . I wanted to ask you why you don’t like me. Because I sort of feel like you don’t, and I don’t know what I did to you to make you feel that way.”
That caught my attention, causing me to turn my entire body and face her. “Don’t like you?”
“Yeah. I mean, it’s pretty obvious I get under your skin, Ty. I don’t know why, though, because when I first came to town, I thought maybe there was . . . um . . . there might have been something there.”
“Something there?” I asked, knowing damn well what she meant and refusing to validate what she was saying.
Hell yes, there was something explosive between us, and my heart and my body were at constant war with each other over that fact.
“You know, an attraction between us. We kissed that night, and everything seemed to change immediately. Why?”
I stared at her, trying like hell to keep my breathing under control. Why was she bringing this up? This was so out of the damn blue. I had no clue what to say to her. How to explain what that kiss did to me . . .
I’d felt something I had never experienced before from just one kiss from her, and that scared me? She scared me?
Hell, she’d laugh in my face if I told her that.
Her eyes searched my face as I fought to find the words to speak. Should I tell her the truth, that she wasn’t like any other woman I’d ever known? That she was the first woman I even dared to want something more with, but I wasn’t sure I was able to give her what I knew she deserved? That I’d already failed in my professional life, that I’d failed my family the minute I’d started abusing the pain meds, and that failing in a relationship wasn’t an option for me? It was something I didn’t think I’d recover from.
Glancing back at my beer bottle, I pulled in a long, slow breath. I knew I didn’t deserve someone like Kaylee Holden. She’d already had one guy disappoint her; she didn’t need another loser. I was a player. A guy who hooked up with women for one reason only. Sex. That was all I had wanted with Kaylee, at first. It was all I had to give. Before the first kiss.
Then the second kiss . . . that one blew my fucking mind. I couldn’t think straight for days after. She haunted my dreams and my thoughts.
I looked back at her, and that’s when she smiled, as if she could read those thoughts.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the brunette making her way over to me. Fuck my life twice. Jesus, I couldn’t catch a break tonight, when all I wanted was a damn beer or two.
“Ty? Are you going to answer me? Why did everything change between us?”
I swallowed hard and did the only thing I knew how to do. I put distance between us with a few harsh lies. “I wanted to fuck you, Kaylee. I thought you were going to be leaving, and when I realized Brock was into Lincoln and you were most likely going to stay, I knew I couldn’t do that to Lincoln. So that’s all you were to me, a good time, and I couldn’t do that to my family.”
Her eyes went wide and her mouth dropped open slightly. The pain that sparked to life in those baby blues of hers instantly made me feel sick. I wanted to take back my words, tell her it was all a lie. That she did, in fact, drive me crazy, and that I did want to fuck her, but just not in the way she thought. I wanted more than that with her; the sex would just be a bonus with this woman who had the power to destroy me.