Page 9 of Heartsmashed
Underneath the nerves was clearly a sensitive soul, a guy who was hurting and made to be defensive about it. I didn’t know yet what it was he was looking for, but he’d obviously walked in here looking for a solution and thought I was the guy to help him.
He wasn’t wrong about that. What I wouldn’t do to ease all that tension, to have his body melting beneath my touch. I told myself it was purely because of my profession, knowing I could help him loosen him up and relax, but that would be a lie. He appealed to me far too much already to keep things strictly platonic.
“So, um, are we allowed to use our names?” he asked. “Or is that not part of the deal?”
I masked my confusion, not wanting to give away that I’d assumed he knew the person he was here to meet.
But then he continued, “I mean, I could just call you #9821, but that’s kind of a mouthful.”
Wait, did he know me…from a file? The man he wanted to meet was a number… He didn’t know a name… He was heartbroken…thinking he’d made a mistake in coming here…
The pieces were starting to fall together, but he was staring at me expectantly.
“Beckett,” I said.
A slow smile curved his mouth. “Beckett. I don’t think I’ve ever met a Beckett before. Does anyone call you Becks?”
“I thought you’d never met a Beckett before?”
“Easy guess.”
I smirked and lifted my glass to my lips. “And you are?”
“Oh, right. Sawyer. And before you ask, no, nobody calls me Saw. Well, just one of my brothers when he’s feeling bad for me, but no one else.”
He was cute, all right. Cute and the right amount of hot and engaging, though he’d obviously been kicked while he was down, given all the self-deprecating talk. I could fix that.
“It’s nice to meet you, Sawyer,” I said.
“Thanks for meeting me, Beckett.” He sipped on his whiskey. “And for making it easy to find you. I figured every guy would be wearing a blue tie, but that was the right call.”
I stopped short, my whiskey hovering in front of my mouth.
So Sawyer had been looking for a nameless, faceless guy in a blue tie…
Across the room, my actual date laughed loudly, and it had me looking in his direction.
To the guy he was completely absorbed in talking to.
The guy in the…blue tie.
Well, shit. There it was. I’d bet my savingsthatblue-tie guy was the man Sawyer was supposed to meet, but had gotten caught up talking to “Ross” instead.
I refocused on Sawyer, who was spinning his glass between his hands, and knew I needed to make a decision. Obviously he’d made a mistake in thinking I was who he thought I was…
Then again, that guy at the bar was all wrong for him. Not to mention currently occupied.
I could correct Sawyer. Tell him he had the wrong guy and walk away. That was the right thing to do, after all, and I’d already let this go on a little too long already.
Instead, I leaned forward and said, “Tell me what you need from me, Sawyer.”
4
SAWYER
IF THERE WAS ever a moment in my life where I needed to pinch myself to believe what was really happening, it was when Beckett, this gorgeous-beyond-belief guy, looked me dead in the eye and asked me what I needed from him.
I mean, where did he want me to start? Because the list was long and extremely X-rated.
