Page 18 of Intrepid

“You go to school here too, Ty?”

Ty shook his head, and the calm on his face assured me that Dane hadn’t rattled him, at all, a gut-settling observation. Surely, the mocking in Dane’s voice would’ve gotten to Ty, but I didn’t sense any tautness, or anger, that suggested Dane was anything more than an annoying fly buzzing around his drink.

Dane, on the other hand, could’ve probably ignited into a ball of flames with all the tension rolling off of him. “Do you … work?”

“Ironworker.”

“Ironworker?”

The disgust in his tone irritated the shit out of me, even if it hadn’t seemed to get to Ty. I hated his snobbery, and the beauty of being out of high school was, I no longer had to tolerate it.

“Good luck at school, Dane. Glad everything is going great with your new relationship.”

Dane blinked and shifted his gaze to me, and before I knew what the hell he was doing, he leaned in and planted a kiss on my cheek. “I’ll see you around, babe.”

I slid my hand into Ty’s and shuffled away from the train-wreck encounter before it could get any more embarrassing. On the way toward the dance floor, I glanced back, my drink still in hand, and smiled. “I never promised you a dance.”

“That top you’re wearing pretty much sealed it with a kiss, sweetheart.”

“So, now you’re asking me for a kiss?”

“Would that be so bad?” He tugged on my hand and jerked his head, leading me in a different direction. Up the staircase, to the second level overlooking the dance floor, where a slightly thinner crowd mostly talked around the scattered pedestal tables that sat closer to the walls.

“You have a thing for heights, huh?”

His smirk answered for him.

I let go of his hand, backing myself against the wall beside us, and toyed with the straw. “I’m so sorry for Dane. He’s … different.”

“You two dated?”

“Obvious, right?”

“The way he looked at me like he wanted to stab me in the throat?” Ty shrugged, looking over the crowd, and back to me. “A little.”

“He’s always been … psychotically jealous?” I sneered at what felt like an absolute understatement. If any guy so much as looked at me while we were dating, he’d be up in his face, threatening a fight. One of many reasons I’d quickly extinguished that relationship.

“He’s the reason you don’t date?”

I contemplated the question for a minute, and at the raise of his brow, I nodded and laughed. “Too much baggage. You’d be in security check for a while with me.”

“That’s where they strip you down in the airport and feel you up, right?”

“They have to be thorough, you know.”

“I appreciate thorough.” He stepped toward me, backing me tighter to the wall, until only a small gap separated us, and that intoxicating scent hit me again.

Jesus. The way he boxed me in sent alarms to my head, while simultaneously firing off bullets of excitement through my blood in a mishmash of mixed signals. “He’s definitely regrettable … ish,” I mumbled incoherently, trying to distract my brain from the deep, chiseled groove of muscles peeking through his T-shirt.

“Ish?” He dipped his head as if to guide my attention back to him.

“My mother told me never to have any regrets about anything. So I try not to. But if I did, that’s how I’d sum up my thoughts about him.”

Her words had such a profound effect on me that I’d gotten No Regrets tattooed on my back the moment I turned eighteen—one of many rebellious acts against my father.

“I see. So, what are your thoughts about me? What type of ish am I?”

Lowering my gaze, I attempted to hide the smile tugging at my lips. “You’re intriguing… ish.” I chuckled and licked my lips, eyeing his drink. “What’s that?”