“Do you want to see them?” Rich asks, pulling his phone from his pocket.
At first I think he means Carter and the girl, but then I realize he’s talking about the pictures. “No.” The one he sent me this afternoon was enough. “All I want is for you to delete them.”
“Why are you acting like you didn’t like it?” He grins at his phone. “Thanks to these, I don’t have to rely on my memory to know you enjoyed yourself.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t. You tell yourself you hate me because you don’t want to accept responsibility for how you felt that night. For what Heath could see even when you denied it.”
I turn to the wall inside the booth. I don’t want to have this conversation, but I refuse to make a scene. I refuse to let him bait me.
“Maybe while Carter’s busy with his girl, you could teach him a lesson.” He tucks a lock of my hair behind my ear, and I flinch.
“Am I interrupting?”
I yank away and look up to see Carter standing at the foot of our table, his angry gaze leveled on Rich. “Not at all,” I say. I want to stand up—to put distance between me and Rich and prove this isn’t what it looks like—but Rich has me trapped inside the booth.
“I was telling Teagan that you left Liam’s bachelor party with some woman who was all over you,” Rich says. “But I guess you finished with her already.”
Carter’s jaw is hard, but he keeps his gaze steady on me and extends a hand. “Dance with me,” he says, as if Rich isn’t even there.
It works. Rich steps out of the booth and out of my way. “You two have fun. Let me know if I can help.” He winks at me, and my stomach churns at the kind of help I know he’s referring to.
I’m so happy to get away from Rich that I fold myself into Carter’s arms on the dance floor.
“Are you okay?” he asks, his mouth against my ear.
I nod. “Fine.”
“When I found you and saw him so close . . .” He gently grips the base of my neck and guides me back so he can look into my eyes. “I wanted to drag him out of the booth and away from you, but I couldn’t tell if you wanted him there or not.”
“I’m glad you came.” I stiffen, remembering the girl Rich mentioned. The one Carter didn’t deny leaving with. I step back, putting distance between our bodies. I’ve made a mess of this weekend. Of my relationship with Carter. Of everything.
“Why do you keep pulling away from me?” Carter asks. He sweeps his knuckles down my jaw, and his throat bobs. “One second I’m touching you and I swear you feel it too, and the next you’re pushing me away. One second you’re on your knees, my fucking fantasy come to life, and the next you won’t look me in the eye.”
I open my mouth to lie, to give one of the dozens of excuses I have in my resist-Carter-Jackson-at-all-costs arsenal, but instead I drag in a deep breath and push away my insecurities. Carter wouldn’t be bringing this up if he didn’t want me to let him closer. “Did we already screw this up?” I ask softly. “Did we open Pandora’s proverbial box last weekend and irrevocably change things between us?”
Something I can’t place flashes in his eyes. Worry? Sadness? “I don’t know.” He shakes his head. “I do know that my whole family would be disappointed if our drunken decisions made you disappear from our lives. The girls would be pissed and my brothers irritated that I did something to upset their women. But most of all . . . I’d miss you.” His smile is different than before. Gone is the cocky guy who throws around sexual innuendo, and suddenly I’m face to face with a very vulnerable Carter—perhaps the one side of him I absolutely can’t resist. “I didn’t tell you, but Jake and I fought at Brayden’s on Sunday. He was pissed that I was treating you like an easy lay. For using you as a distraction from my own issues. I don’t know if he was right—if I was treating you like that—but I never meant to.”
I realize I’ve stopped dancing and wrap my arms behind his neck, but I keep enough distance between us that I can look up into his face. Carter even admitting that he has issues feels immense.
“Would it be so bad?” he asks, settling his hands on my hips.
“Would what be so bad?”
He squeezes my hip. “If things were different between us? If they changed? If maybe this all wasn’t one big lie or another way for me to cope, but the beginning of something real?”