I shake my head. “You suck.”
“And quite well, I’m told.”
I groan. “You’re so nasty.”
“No, I just have the libido of a teenage boy and I’m a woman in her sexual prime.” She pokes me in my chest. “And I know you, Elyse Thomas. Your libido is just as strong as mine—you’re denying yourself. It’s not healthy.”
“Yeah, you may be right, but I have other considerations. I can’t just do whatever I want. I wish I could, but I have a responsibility to Aiden, and that has to come first.”
She sighs. “You have a point, which I grant you. But I think you’re also hiding behind Aiden because you’re scared of being hurt again. I think what happened between you and Daniel hurt you a lot deeper than you even realize yourself.”
I huff. “Can we just go home?”
She grins mischievously, pulling me by the arm back toward Vinnie’s. “One more drink first.”
I pull back. “I’m not going back in there.”
“He left, Elyse. I watched him go out the front door and walk toward Oak Junction.” She hesitates. “He didn’t look happy, either.”
“Well, no. I keep rejecting him.”
Cora breathes out slowly, pressing her palms together. “I’ve said my piece, and I shall say no more. You know how I feel, I know how you feel, and we don’t need to keep having the same conversation.”
I let her drag me back inside, and I let her buy me a drink even though I never even finished the glass of wine Jamie bought me—it’s still sitting on the table at the booth, actually, next to Jamie’s equally untouched drink. I sit at the bar with Cora and listen to her exchange entertainingly witty banter with Abe and Grady—she’s the only one who can ever get them to crack a grin, and she does it through a salty, ear-curling variety of vulgar insults and bawdy jokes.
My heart’s not here, though. Not in this bar, and not in the conversation.
It’s on Jamie. On that hurt look in his eyes, the resignation in his voice.
I wish I could soothe it. I wish I could take away the hurt, take away the resignation. I wish I could take back my rejections. I wish I could go back and be in bed with him again. Wake up with him, wrapped around him. Wrapped up in him.
But I can’t.
I just can’t.
