Page 90 of Call You Mine
This one is for her anyway.
I fall back into conversation with Jack when I feel someone standing just a little too close.
Someone who isn’t Ava.
“Hi,” the stranger says, causing my head to turn. She’s a little taller than Ava, but she still has to look up to meet my eyes. Her blonde hair is tied back into a long ponytail, showing her sharp cheekbones and lips that look just a little too big to be natural.
“Hello,” I offer, to be polite, knowing Jack won’t be the one to say anything. The fucker will barely say a word to me—and he knows me.
“What’s your name?” the woman asks, and I feel her hand trail down my arm. The touch feels weird, foreign.
“Anderson,” I answer politely, but I don’t ask for hers.
I don’t really care what it is.
The way her teeth sink into her bottom lip as she eyes me with a hungry glare tells me everything I need to know. I take a small step away from her, angling my body slightly and causing her hand to drop. She wobbles a little bit, in a way that tells me she’s had plenty to drink tonight.
She reaches out to grab my arm again as she catches her balance, and I don’t like how warm it is on my skin. It’s not the same warmth that I feel whenever Ava accidentallybrushes up against me or on one of the rare chances she reaches for me.
Those moments are few and far between, but I’d take just thechanceof Ava touching me over the way this woman keeps pawing at me.
“Are you guys from around here?” she says, her voice breathy and a little slurred.
I glance at Jack, who takes a sip of his beer. He lifts a brow at me, but he doesn’t say anything.
“No, we’re not,” I say, gently plucking her hand from my arm, using two fingers to grab her wrist.
But she doesn’t take the hint.
Instead, she steps even closer, and I’m backed against the bar, with not much room to move with how crowded the venue is getting as we get closer and closer to Cross My Heart coming on.
“Well, where are you from?” she asks when I don’t say anything more.
“Wisconsin,” I answer, trying to hold on to my patience. Her blonde ponytail swings as she sways, and I glance around her, hoping she has friends close by.
“Well,Wisconsin,” she slurs. “Can I buy you a drink?” She blinks her eyes up at me, glassy and unfocused, and now I know she’s drunk. Also, does she not see the drink in my hand?
“I’m good,” I tell her, holding up my can of beer for her to see.
“Come on,” she manages to say, but it sounds like the words were hard for her to get out. “Aren’t people from Wisconsin big drinkers?” She laughs at herself as if she just told the funniest joke, even though it was barely a sentence.
I force out a chuckle. “Yeah, sure,” I say. “But, like I said, I’m good.”
“Come on, it’s just a drink,” she says, lightly slapping her palm on my shoulder, her touch lingering.
“Oh!” we hear, and it causes the woman in front of me to turn around, finding Ava, her arms crossed over her chest, Emerson on one side of her and Rumi on the other. “You’re getting drinks? We’ll all take another.” There’s a layer of malice in the way Ava speaks the words, eyeing the woman up and down, confidence coming off her in waves.
It has my dick twitching.
“No,” the girl says, scoffing, turning back to me and Jack as if Ava is the one out of line.
Ava comes to stand at my side, putting herself between me and the woman, and cocks her head. “No? Well, that’s weird,” she remarks, pretending to be confused. “I could’ve sworn I heard you offermyhusbandone.”
CHAPTER 28
AVA
I was aboutto tell Emerson and Rumi that my period hadn’t come today like it’s supposed to when my vision turned red, the thought going to the back of my head for now.
