She answered, and there was a blare of sound, as if she was somewhere loud. “Nick!” she shouted over the noise. “Hi!”
She sounded panicked and relieved at the same time, which I didn’t expect. “Evie?” I said. “Where are you?”
“I can’t hear you,” she said. “Hold on.” I waited a second, but the noise didn’t go down. It sounded like the pulse of loud dance music. “Shit, I still can’t hear you,” she said. “Let me—” The line went dead.
So much for playing it casual.
I couldn’t let it go. So I texted her instead.Where are you?
Cintano’s,she replied, naming a trendy downtown bar. Known mostly for hookups, if you were a trendy kind of person. Which Evie wasn’t. She was a lot of things, but trendy wasn’t one of them.
Still, I had to ask the question.What are you doing there?
Her answer took a second.You told me to find someone to fuck me,she wrote.And you won’t do it. So here I am.
I stared at the words with disbelieving eyes. Then I closed my eyes and tilted my head back.
Fuck.Fuck.
Why was I so stupid sometimes?
It was none of my goddamn business. She was right, I’d said no. Evie was free and single, and could go to Cintano’s on Saturday night if she wanted. Pick up who she wanted. Fuck who she wanted.
Not my business at all.
Except Cintano’s was a meat market. She didn’t belong in a meat market, meeting those kinds of guys. Letting them buy her drinks and come on to her. Letting them touch her and take her home.
I didn’t care. Nope. We’d been of some use to each other, gotten drunk for one fun night, and that was all. We weren’t dating or fucking. We weren’t anything, even though she’d tried.
She was at Cintano’s on Saturday night.
The beast inside me roared to life again. Evie with her pretty red hair, her soft skin, her nice round ass, at Cintano’s. Right now.
I should not fucking care about this.
The phone buzzed in my hand again. It was Evie.
Confession,she wrote.It isn’t going very well.
Oh, fucking hell. That sealed it.I’ll be right there,I texted back.Don’t move.
“Hey!” Andrew said as I came back inside and put on my leather jacket. He held up his hands. “What about bros before redheads?”
“Next time,” I told him.
“Fine. But while you’re gone, I’m going to draw Lightning Boy and Judy Gravity getting it on. And it’s going to befilthy.”
“Do not draw that,” I shouted over my shoulder, and I banged the door shut behind me.
THIRTEEN
Evie
Confession. It isn’t going very well.
I had never been to Cintano’s before. But if a girl is going to try and get herself laid, she may as well go to the top place in town for it. On Saturday night.
This was the new me—or, should I say, newer than the last new me. I was going to be bold and sexy. Adventurous. But I was also going to be confident and in control. I wasn’t going to be the sad-sack cheating victim Josh had made me out to be, or the pathetic hard-up girl who begged Nick Mason to have sex with her. I also wasn’t going to be the boring bank teller with “marriage material” on an invisible sign over her head. None of the guys at this bar knew me, so I was going to be someone new, and sexy, and fun, just for one night.