Page 76 of Anger Bang
“I have a question for you, too.” Nervous and unsure all of a sudden, his words were just flying out of his mouth, faster than Jackie’s bouquet jetted through the air. “Do you want to go happy bang?” The question exploded out of his mouth before he could stop it, a firehose of stupidity set to full blast.Holy shit, St. James. What were you thinking? Are you even thinking?
“That was bad,” he said before grinding his teeth together in an effort not to screw this up even more. He let out a quick huff of breath and started over. “I’m sorry. Can I have another try?”
Thea had her lips pursed together as if she was trying to stop a giggle from squeaking out. She nodded.
Thank God.
“I know all of this started as a way to get back at your sister, and we agreed on no sharing of personal information.”
“Yeah,” she said with a chuckle, “we kinda messed that up.”
“Exactly,” he said, every part of him focused only on her. “And then there was the no-kissing part.”
She pressed her fingertips to her lips. “Another miss.”
“Right. And we promised each other that nothing would happen after the wedding. That whatever happened in hell stayed in hell,” he said, relieved that this was finally it—this was what he’d been waiting all day to tell her. “Well, I think we should fail at that, too.”
He waited, sucking air into his lungs like a man who’d been underwater for a year, hoping Thea would say yes or anything close to that.
But she didn’t.
She didn’t say a single thing.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Every nerve in Thea’s body was raging an epic battle that had her somehow fighting for breath, frozen to the spot, ready to run a million miles away, and arguing to just go with the flow to minimize the conflict.
All around her, people were dancing or laughing at the joke someone else said or downing another drink as they covertly scrolled their phones under the table. Jackie and Dex were leading the rest of the bridal party in the Cupid Shuffle while the moms were behind the bar mixing nonalcoholic mocktails for everyone.
No one was watching.
The camera crew had put down their cameras once their part of the live stream ended. There were the remote cameras, but Jackie’s mission before she ended up in a supply closet with Dex was to strategically place laser pointers around the room to disable the camera’s optics. All of the camerapeople were relaxing at what had become a crew table by the bar. They were barely even eyeing the dance floor as they sipped their virgin cranberry sangrias, listening to Justine tell what was no doubt a war story from the foxholes of reality TV.
Still, Thea had that buzz of electricity making her jittery as she stood there in the spotlight of Kade’s attention. Her heart was threatening to burst out of her chest, and her lungs had ceased to function without her mentally yelling at herself to inhale and then exhale.
Kade closed the last few inches of distance between them, blocking the rest of the world from her view. There was only the two of them. Her pulse started to slow, and her body remembered how to breathe on its own.
He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, his fingertips brushing her skin and sending waves of yes-please shivers down her spine. “You look like you aren’t sure if you should implode in on yourself or kiss me.”
“Oh, good,” she said, finding it hard to form words when she was finally so close to him after a day of everyone and a TV producer keeping them apart. “I look exactly how I feel.”
The lights changed above them, glowing softer as the DJ swapped from “Rapper’s Delight” by The Sugarhill Gang to Madonna’s “Crazy for You.”
“Well,” he said, his touch trailing down the side of her neck. “I have a little secret for you.”
“What’s that?” she asked, her voice breathy with anticipation.
His touch, the slow steady rhythm of the song, and just being close to him scattered her in the best way possible. Oh, her heart was still hammering, but it wasn’t from anxiety. It was from hope and desire.
“You don’t have to decide right now what happens after we leave the wedding.” Kade slipped the hand still holding the bouquet around her and laid his palm against the small of her back before taking her other hand in his and bringing them into perfect dance position. “We can simply dance.”
“Right now?” She looked around suddenly, remembering there were other people in the room besides her and Kade.
“Itisa wedding reception,” he said as he eased her out onto the dance floor. “It’s kinda what people do.”
They started moving to the beat, and no one paid them any mind. Everyone was lost in their own worlds at the end of a week of being constantly on, everyone looking so damn glad to finally get to be totally themselves again. Even Lakin and Piper were arm in arm and swaying to the beat.
Tomorrow, they’d all leave for home, and the sulfur-scented fantasy—or nightmare—of it all would fade away. Kade wanted to give it a try, to see what could happen after Wyoming. It was exactly what she wanted, and yet all of her anxiety responses were duking it out in an epic battle of I-want-to-but-I’m-scared.
